TORNADO TOLL

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31660, 22 April 1968, Page 11

TORNADO TOLL

Thirteen Killed r.V.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) GREENWOOD (Arkansas), April 21. The small farming community of Greenwood in the Ozark foothills has been sealed off as rescuers probe piles of rubble for more victims of the tornado which killed 13 and injured over 300 in minutes on Friday. The sheriff’s office in nearby Fort Smith, the centre of rescue operations, said 13 were known dead, an undisclosed number missing and over 400 injured. Hundreds of the town’s 1550 people were homeless. Houses were “scattered like I matchsticks” as the tornado! suddenly whirled down from a passing thundercloud, witnesses said. The swirling wind funnel cut a swathe 400 yards wide and half a mile long through the town, devastating three- 1 quarters of the business■ centre and destroying many of the wood-frame houses in the residential districts. More than 200 regular Army troops from nearby Fort Chaffee, members of the local Air National Guard unit, civil defence volunteers, and sheriffs from surrounding districts sifted through the rubble in the search for victims. The sheriff’s office said 61 of the injured were detained in local hospitals and doctors and nurses toiled to treat the hundreds of less seriously hurt. The Greenwood Mayor, Ed Hall, said he estimated 75 per cent of business in the town, a farming centre and the former South Sebastian County seat, had been destroyed.