The Bursting of the Portland Reservoir.
I will attempt to describe the accident very briefly. On Sunday morning the 6th of August, 1893, about 5:30 o’clock, the distributing reservoir of 20,000,000 capacity on Munjoy Hill in Portland, Maine, gave away. It gave away without any previous warning. The superintendent of the water works had visited the site within a very few days, and had been entirely around the embankment. Other men had also visited it within a comparatively short space of time, and there had never been a sign of the slightest degree of percolation anywhere, no rank growth of water grass, no damp spot or “ spring” near the foot of the slope, although one part of the bank was 40 feet in height.
A man whose house was demolished by the flood, testified that at 8 o’clock the previous evening he stood for some time leaning against the fence, scarce ten paces from where the break occurred, and his son who got home an hour after midnight noticed nothing wrong when he passed the spot.
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