Flooding in Museum Forces Flood Museum to Close

A museum that commemorates the flooding of a Pennsylvania town was forced to close after it flooded itself.

Officials said that Johnstown Flood Museum had suffered an "interior water leak caused by the recent extreme cold," and would be closed indefinitely until it could be fixed, Heritage Johnstown said in a Facebook post.

Dan Solomon, chairman of Heritage Johnstown, told The Tribune-Democrat that some chairs in the museum's projection room were damaged after the boiler room flooded, however no viewing equipment was affected.

Museum officials said that one of their volunteers had been working on the day that the flood happened, and was able to alert others and prevent the situation from becoming "much, much worse," WJAC reported.

"We are grateful for the quick thinking of Nikki Bosley, our docent who was working in the archives and discovered the problem! Nothing of historic significance was affected, and we hope to soon have a timeline for reopening," Heritage Johnstown said on Facebook.

The Johnstown Flood Museum honors the lives of more than 2,000 people who died after a flood swept through Johnstown in 1889, according to Heritage Johnstown's website. Nearly 100 entire families died in the disaster, and more than 1,600 buildings were destroyed.