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Through Emily Godbey’s essay, she addresses how the Johnstown Flood went from being a natural disaster killing over 2,200 people to becoming a leisure event where rubbernecks could come to sight see and tour. Godbey first retells the story of how the flood happened and how it could have been prevented if people would have built the dam correctly the first time and then checked on it during the storm to make sure it hold it up it could have prevented a natural disaster. She actually goes as far as saying, ” the Johnstown Flood was clearly manmade” and after going over the story twice myself I believe she has the right to state that. She then goes into to discussing how sight seekers flocked to Johnstown several days after the disaster and how newspapers and railroads tried to keep them from coming to the town because they would get in the way of the workers trying to restore the city to working conditions; the city later became a mixture of a military base and a mining town. During this time there were rises of tourist economics in the city. Some locals opened up stores for people to buy from the wreckage while some tourists just took random objects they found while walking around Johnstown, photographs became a very popular trend as well and people would pay money to get these rare photos while some spots like John Schultz’s house became hot spots for people to take pictures in front of. Melodramas were created with the disaster being the setting for journalist’s characters. Just like in chriscobar post about the Chicago fire, Godbey points out that the flood did not pick its victims based on their social class, but destroyed everything and killed everyone in its pass. As she pointed out people came to look at all the deaths in the morgue as if it was a museum for them to go to on their day off, I couldn’t help but think about how many people actually got claimed by their loved ones and further thought about how many people on average get claimed after any disaster and the closure their loved ones get.