ALLEGHENY CONFERENCE ON COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PHOTOGRAPHS, 1892-1981, MSP 285, DETRE LIBRARY & ARCHIVES AT THE HISTORY CENTER.

Across history, few events outside of war and political assassinations caused newspaper typesetters to reach for their 48-point headline letterblocks quite like disasters — natural or otherwise.

This was certainly true for the calamities that have befallen Pittsburgh since our birth. The Great Fire of 1845 was announced in the Gazette the same way your elder relative texts about a particularly painful Steelers loss: in all caps and with an excessive use of exclamatory punctuation. “MOST DREADFUL CALAMITY!! PITTSBURGH IN RUINS!!”

Pittsburghers generally have at least a passing acquaintance with our major disasters, including the Allegheny Arsenal explosion of 1862 (“A DIREFUL CALAMITY”), the Homestead Battle of 1892 (“A DAY OF RIOT AND CARNAGE”) and the St. Patrick’s Day Flood of 1936 (“RAVAGING FLOOD CRIPPLES CITY”). These disasters, and the loss of life and property they represent, are certainly worthy of our continued attention.

But dozens of other local calamities, mostly forgotten, also whisper sorrowful stories worth acknowledging.

Though the science of weather forecasting continues to confound us with its prognosticative misses, we are not the sitting ducks regional residents once were. On an unseasonably warm afternoon in January 1889, an incoming cold front was announced by a brief but intense windstorm that punished the crowded Downtown streets without warning — and with such severity that pedestrians were tossed into the streets like ragdolls. A seven-story building under construction near Wood Street burst “like a balloon” in one “SWEEP OF THE DEATH ANGEL’S WING.”

Ripped-away doors and swirling debris were transformed into airborne missiles. In the aftermath, a 16-year-old messenger boy trapped within the rubble of the Weldin building was kept calm by whiskey sent to him via hose. The lad, who could count the future Bishop Canevin as one of his rescuers, sadly succumbed to his injuries the following day, becoming one of dozens who died as a result of the windstorm.

Lesser-known than the 1936 flood, which took 62 lives in the region, is the much deadlier July 1874 Butcher’s Run Flood. That deluge swept through the North Side as a tide of rushing water with such force that it trapped fleeing crowds, and tore homes and factories from foundations before smashing them “to atoms” (“DOOM IN THE MAD TIDE”). Despite rescue efforts that continued into the night, often in waist-deep waters, bodies were found low in basements and even tossed high into the branches of trees. Among the approximately 200 dead were entire families. Some who survived were left with nothing. As one victim, a Mr. Bowers, told the Gazette while pointing to his clothing, “I have nothing — these clothes are not mine; I borrowed them. I have only a shirt and pants left.”

Whether by water, street or rail, Pittsburgh has seen awful transportation-related catastrophes, like that which occurred in October 1880 near 28th Street in the Strip District. A 75,000-pound, overcrowded passenger train was headed home from a pre-election torchlight parade. Unfortunately, the train and its mass of humanity plowed into the rear of an equally crowded train (“A SEPULCHRE FORMED OF A PASSENGER TRAIN”). What resulted from the midnight collision was “an appalling baptism of blood and sorrow” as bodies were flung and maimed beyond repair and a burst water boiler bathed others in scalding steam.

In the aftermath, thousands who were desperately seeking word of missing loved ones crowded the doors of local hospitals, where victims were being triaged and limbs had been amputated. It’s difficult to ascertain exactly how many perished, but it is known that 26 died soon after the incident while an unknown number succumbed in the days following. Three weeks after the accident, there were still 14 hospitalized at West Penn, many holding little hope for recovery.

You’ve heard of the mysteriously disappearing B-25 “ghost” bomber that in 1956 sputtered into the icy Monongahela, drowning two of its six airmen, but you’ve likely never heard of the Island Queen excursion boat disaster of 1947 — despite the fiery deaths of 19 crewmen (“ISLAND QUEEN BURNS HERE”). Amid the early years of atomic scares, the famed excursion steamer was moored on the Mon River near Wood Street, when a violent explosion sent debris and flames hundreds of feet upward and pushed window-shattering vibrations into Downtown.

Panicked crowds fled the falling shards. Some, spying the cloud of blue smoke near the river, shouted, “Atom bomb!,” running for shelter from that which they’d long feared. The explosion, sparked by an ill-advised welding repair that breached the ship’s fuel tank, burnt the entirety of the boat within minutes and set fire to more than 50 automobiles along the Wharf.

As motorists, you likely worry about our many deteriorating bridges — but you probably don’t spend much time fretting over the risk of suffocating in a tunnel. Yet that’s exactly what happened in 1924: A traffic jam exacerbated by a streetcar strike revealed the ventilation inadequacies of the newly opened Liberty Tunnels. Stuck inside the gas-filled tubes, motorists began to lose consciousness at the wheel, one after another (“SCORES ARE OVERCOME”).

Before long, would-be rescuers were themselves overtaken by fumes; the mouth of the tunnel painted a startling scene, as unconscious victims who had been dragged out lay strewn on the ground. Some stricken rescuers were revived only to insistently re-enter the noxious tunnel.

Remarkably, the disaster, which left dozens hospitalized, didn’t claim any lives — although it did catalyze improved tunnel ventilation. The next time you’re stuck inside the Liberty Tubes wondering why the motorcyclist idling in the lane next to yours isn’t passing out, you can tip your cap to the events of 1924.

Many of Pittsburgh’s forgotten catastrophes, like the Island Queen, have illustrated what we learned from the Allegheny Arsenal disaster: Sometimes, things just explode. In May 1918, during World War I, the Aetna Chemical Co. plant in Oakdale (where explosives were being manufactured) was destroyed by a series of blasts that likely had been sparked by a chemical reaction between TNT and, surprisingly, baking soda (“HORROR OF DISASTER”). Amid fire, desperation and heroism, 200 died and the plant was never rebuilt.

Less deadly but still worth noting is the Equitable Gas tank explosion that decimated parts of the lower North Side in 1927 (near today’s Rivers Casino), killing 28, including at least one first responder. The blast, which sent a column of fire and steel hundreds of feet upward, was so powerful that its destructive reverberations rippled more than half a mile; it shattered windows and damaged infrastructure Downtown (“CITY IS SHAKEN BY TERRIFIC CONCUSSION”).

There has never been a fire in our city quite like that which destroyed up to one-third of Downtown in April 1845, miraculously taking only three lives; however, there have certainly been deadlier conflagrations, like the blaze that erupted in July 1931 at the Home for the Aged of the Little Sisters of the Poor, killing 48 elderly residents and injuring more than 200 (“FLAMES TRAP SCORES”). As flames raged, dozens of stories of heroism, from nuns fighting to get residents out to rescuers (many just neighborhood men and boys) fighting to get inside. They were seen scaling walls and carrying injured victims down fire escapes. One passerby who leapt into action, W. H. Schulte, reportedly made more than 20 trips into the inferno. “I couldn’t stand by and just watch,” he said, “so I ran in.”

Seeing such an accounting of horrifying catastrophes can be depressing. For comic relief, we can turn to the fact that Pittsburgh long has had a problem with escaped monkeys and primates — from the 14 monkeys who escaped the Riverview Zoo in 1911 to the nine chimpanzees who escaped the Highland Park Zoo in 1960, setting an example for the five macaques who did it in 1986. One might wonder if five or even 14 escaped monkeys could really be considered a “disaster.”

Perhaps not.

But 34 escaped monkeys certainly would be, and that’s the number that fled in June 1952. Amid 99-degree heat, some boys lowered a hose into the rhesus monkey enclosure at the zoo, providing an escape route for primate mayhem as every single member of the tribe scampered to freedom. The zookeeper warned Highland Park residents to keep their windows closed and reminded them that monkeys, when threatened, could be dangerous. All of the monkeys were rounded up by nightfall, but not before Post-Gazette photographer James G. Klingensmith grabbed the snap of a lifetime: a lone rhesus monkey soaring overhead as it leapt joyfully from rooftop to rooftop in the East End.

Mayhem, indeed.

In her column, Virginia Montanez digs deep into local history to find the forgotten secrets of Pittsburgh. Sign up for her email newsletter at: breathingspace.substack.com.