Nightmare In The Eye Of A Tornado

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30592, 7 November 1964, Page 5

Nightmare In The Eye Of A Tornado

(By

G. R. LANE]

J/V a bitter March breeze thousands queued in the streets of America’s major cities. T hey shivered in the wind, for it was a deadly wind, it had scythed a path of death and violence through the heart of the nation. And now as people waited to give their blood to the maimed and dying of three states, loudspeaker vans soliciting further help brayed their message in the streets. “For whom the bell tolls? Today for them. Tomorrow for you?”

Perhaps. Tornadoes are not particular. Two days earlier, on March 20, 1925, one of the most ferocious winds in history had torn its way across Illinois, Tennessee and Kentucky, cutting a swath of death and destruction hundreds of miles long yet, incredibly, a mere 100 yards wide. It ripped through towns and lashed the land with a bitter tongue. Behind it were left more than a thousand dead, at least twice as many wounded, and damage amounting to £3OO million.

The morning of March 20 had broken grey and foreboding. By midday black banks of clouds had been marshalled across the sky. Rain squalls lashed across the land and then unaccountably died. There was the lull before the storm. Shortly after 1 p.m., with a screech of fury, the tornado made its first killing. In Murphysboro, Illinois, 100 children were romping in a school playground. Suddenly as If by the hands of a cruel giant in a fairy tale, they were scooped from the ground and flung on top of each other in mangled confusion. Ten children were killed by the force of the blast and nearby school buildings crumbled like matchboard, pinning still more victims. At nearly 200 miles an hour the tornado swept eastwards, flailing the waters of the Mississippi into a frothing fury, and plunging into Southern Illinois. In its wake lay 10 towns in utter devastation. Under the wreckage, people shouted for help but there were few in a state to save them. In the streets lamp posts were bent like dying lilies and in the fields hundreds of acres of fruit trees were sucked up as though by a giant harvester. There were some terrible sights.

When state troopers from Illinois, called in as emergency squads, reached the tiny community of De Soto they found it had been wiped out. As one eye-witness put it: “The little place only had 300 inhabitants originally. One hundred were killed outright and the survivors might just as well have been.” At South Greenfield, Illinois, rescue workers came across the macabre spectacle of cars piled one on the other, like plates on a kitchen shelf. All the drivers were dead, many of them still at the wheel. Everywhere were wrecked trains. Survivors spoke of seeing telegraph poles being wrenched out of their sockets and flung for miles. For hours, the stricken towns were completely cut off from the outside world. Fires broke out and in some areas rescuers had to fight looting gangs. Already the nation was pouring in aid. Emergency blood centres were set up

and donors queued all night to help. Even gaol inmates clamoured to offer their help. From Chicago and St. Louis trainloads of doctors and nurses moved into the stricken areas. Tragically, so many of the victims were beyond help. That first night after the

disaster, silence and darkness lay on the area. All public services were out of order. Attempts to restore them led to a spate of fires. Flames flickered across the wrecked townships as firemen with improvised equipment fought vainly to prevent further damage. There were some miraculous escapes. In one town, a man and his wife clung to each other when three walls of their house collapsed around them. The husband said later: “We were saved by the fourth wall falling across us. The tornado nearly ripped it off, but sped on without doing any damage to us.” The President of a bank took refuge in his vaults. “1 looked out of the window and saw houses collapsing like matchwood. I got to the basement in the nick of time.” Then a new threat occurred. The water supplies became contaminated and typhoid was a serious risk. People wandered among the wreckage vainly calling names. Parents hysterically dug at piles of rubble until their hands bled. Hastily-improvised information centres tried to deal with inquiries from distracted relatives, but usually they could offer little comfort. Aid to stricken America poured in. It had been a week

of disasters. China had suffered one of the most savage earthquakes in her history and whole towns had been wiped out. Yet the Chinese government offered any help to the Americans that might be needed. For days, the newspapers of the world were filled with heart-breaking details. Each day brought news of increasing death figures. They built a memorial to the children of Murphysboro. And throughout the three states there are tablets and stones remembering others who perished in the wind of death. A thousand people died that March day and 40 years later millions still shudder to remember.