Computational Leadership

Introduction: How a Flood in Johnstown, Pennsylvania Inspired Computational Leadership

In 1880, Henry Clay Frick, chairperson of the Carnegie Steel Company and one of the wealthiest people in the world, led a group of investors in purchasing an abandoned reservoir, which they converted into the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. It was a playground for the wealthy elite of the day. A place where they could escape the chaos of America's industrial revolution.

Unfortunately, during development, leadership made three doomed decisions regarding repairs to the reservoir's dam—which was then the largest earthen dam in the world. They lowered the dam by over three feet to make its top wide enough for a two‐lane road, they added debris‐gathering fish screens in the spillway to maintain fish stocks, and they decided not to replace drainage pipes, which were sold off for scrap by the previous owner. The Club's leaders took these actions despite continued warnings from engineers that the dam's modifications and insufficient repairs were creating a situation for catastrophic failure.¹

The stage was set for crisis, and in less than a decade of purchasing the dam, the possibility of failure became a horrific reality on May 31, 1889. After record‐breaking rainfall, the dam broke and my hometown—Johnstown, Pennsylvania—was leveled with 20 million tons of water, killing 2,209 people and accounting for approximately $534 million in damage (in 2023 money). The flood, at the time, was the worst ...