A FATAL CYCLONE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIV, Issue 93, 21 April 1893, Page 4

A FATAL CYCLONE.

TORNADO IN THE UNITED STATES

A TOWN WIPED OUT,

Memphis (Term.) March 24.— The damage done by yesterday's cyclone in the Mississippi Valley is enormous. Whilo the loss of lifo is not as great as was at lirst reported, the damage to property will reach §2,000,000. The telegraph wires are still demoralised, and reports aro coming in slowly from the storm districts. It will be several flays before the full extent, of the disaster will be known. Tbo death list foots up twenty-three, while the liat of the injured will run up into the hundreds. The names of the dead at Kelly, Miss., go far as known, are : Harriet Smith, Mary Williams, Susan Williams, and two unknown neoro women. The dead elsewhere are : Richard Heard and Thomas Heard, Shubuta, Mies. ; Eli Prince, Evansville, Miss. ; Drury Sumralls and his family of nine, Shaw s, Miss. The first heard of the cyclone was in Northern Loulsana and Southern Arkansas. It crossed tho Mississippi a few miles above Grenville, devastating plantations, wreckin" farmhouses and uprooting giant forest trees. The path of tho storm was about half a mile wide, and nothing was lefo standing in its track. The hurricane then changed its course slightly, and travelled along the right of way of the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad uuti) it entered Cleveland, Miss., where a public school building and several stores and residences were razed to the ground. Leaving Cleveland, the cyclone passed within a milo of Clarksdale, a town of 2,000 inhabitants, and next struck Tunica, the county seat of Tunica county. Nearly every building in the place was wrecked. The public school building was wrecked, and over thirty children wore maimed and crippled, some of thorn being fatally Tho towns of Crawfordeville and Vincent were nearly wiped off the earth. Tho storm then took a north easterly course, reaching Kelly, Miss., about 4 o'clock m the afternoon. Here the greatest darepp was done. Six people were killed oubn,;.it and scores were injured. Not a building was left standing, the fragments being strewn over the country for miles, Many families were rendered homoless, and great damage was done to property.