TORNADO’S HAVOC

Evening Star, Issue 18034, 31 July 1922, Page 8

TORNADO’S HAVOC

PUTTY KILLED IN NEW YORK. WIDESPREAD RUIN. NEW YORK, June 12. Yesterday afternoon New York was visited by a hurricane without parallel in the records of the city. Between fifty and sixty persons were killed, and hundreds of injured are now in hospital. The storm came like a _ bolt from the blue. Without warning it swept down upon the tens of thousands who wore enjoying a gorgeous Sunday afternoon in the parks by the waters of Long Island Sound and other pleasure resorts. Wind funnels, waterspouts, and terrifying displays of lightning in a few minutes devastated entire districts. Coming up from the southwest, the hurricane struck the northern , part of the city about half-past 5. i Travelling at terrific speed, it swept over the residential suburbs ot Westchester and Long Island to the north and east ; of Now York, where most of the play- ' grounds of the city are situated ■j Its approach was awe-inspiring; dense i masses of inky clouds spread over what ' a few moments before had been a blue : summer sky. Those clouds were only a | few hundred feet from the ground, and j below them lurid yellow vapors swirled and twisted, while along the ground in ' advance of the storm swept a barrage of dust and debris of all kinds. Out of the murky mass jagged tongues of lightning flashed and flickered, sometimes three and four at a time, to bo succeeded by instantaneous crashes of thunder. Great trees were uprooted and carried along. Others fell on houses or motor i cars, crushing the occupants- Electric I wires were torn down, and the lighting and telephone services are sue,pended over wide areas. At least .three persons were killed by touching broken high-power electric railway cables. Owing to damage to the wires and the blocicing of lines by fallen trees, train services ware interrupted, and some suburban lines are still disorganised this morning. Half the deaths caused by the hurricane occurred! off City Island, one of the most popular Sunday resorts for New Yorkers, situated in Long Island Sound. When the storm struck the waters of the sound they were dotted with hundreds of skiffs and canoes. These were overturned and' sunk by dozens. Coastguards, police, and volunteers from the surrounding yacht clubs workedl during the height of the, storm and for hours after in rescuing men, women, and children clinging to overturned 1 craft. After dark the rescue work was continued with the aid of searchlights. Twenty bodies have so far been recovered, many being those of children, j It is estimated that same twenty thou- | sand people, a large proportion of whom I were foreigners, wore on City Island when the storm burst. Terror-stricken by the lightning and' the deafening roar of the thunder, the crowds gave way to panic, trampling one another under foot. After City Eland l the most serious casualties occurred in the amusement park situated on the northern tip of Manhattan Island, on the Harlem River. A feature of this park was a “ big wheel,” similar to that which used to be at Earl’s Court. It was 100 ft in diameter. As if it had been a toy the wind' lifted the whole structure and dashed it to pieces on the river bank. About fifty people were in the cars on the wheel. Seven of them were killed outright and thirty were seriously injured.

j A*mother and her seven-year-old l daugh- ' ter were killed in the Bed Lion Inn at Mamarotieck. Fity motorists were sheltering in the big dining room when the lightning struck the building twice in quick succession. Three trees were struck outside at the. same time. One great elm, picked up by the wind, was carried like a battering ram ihrough the wall of the dining room and crushed the woman and child to death. A mile away a great tree fell on the cottago hospital, preventing its motor ambulances from getting out to attend to urgent calls for assistance from all quarters. At Mount Vernon, another suburb, a woman with a- child in her arms had just reached l the door of her home when a largo tree carried along by the terrific wind killed her ktnd the Child. Two members of the famous Piping Bock Country Club on Long Island were crushed to death near the eluib house when a tree foil on their motor car.

In places the storm assumed all the characteristics of the famous Western “twisters.” It created vortices, into which all binds of objects were sucked and carried high into the air before being hurled down with terrific force on the tops of buildings. In Now York city an enormous sky sign 90ft hy 40ft was wrenched from its fastenings and 1 dashed down on the roof of a neighboring building. Coping stones from walls were blown down, and window's in “skyscrapers” hurst in by the force of the wind. Fourteen dead lies in one city .hospital alone.

The beautiful suburb of Morristown, in New Jersey, across the Hudson, was ravaged by wind and lightning. Morristown is famous for its magnificent okl> shade-trees, some of which dated from tho time of the Revolution. Dozens of these were uprooted, partially wrecking houses aa they fell. In tho manufacturing city of Newark, a few miles away, so many high-power electric wires are down that a whole street has been roped off by the police as a measure of precaution. All this death and destruction took place in tho space of less than half an hour. In some parts the storm lasted as long as that, in others it passed l quickly after the first disastrous blast. At its highest pitch the wind varied from eightyeight miles an hour over the southern part of Manhattan, which was least affected, to an estimated 100 miles an hour farther north. Later. This morning reports, delayed by the destruction of telephone and telegraph lines, show that the storm has caused havoc over an area etroaching from Ohio to Massachusetts. At Syracuse. 550 miles from Now York, a cloudburst filled the streets with a foot of water. Outside the city in a. cutting a New York Central express train was caught in the rising waters, which put out the fire in tho engine. This occurred early on Sunday morning, and the passengers in the sleeping oars were aroused as the water rose over the floors of the carriages. Firemen and volunteers took them to safty in boats and on rafts. Several women escaped with only blankets over their nightgowns. The water was 6ft- deep as the last passengers were taken from the roofs of tho coaches.

At Boston, Massachusetts, the damage i& estimated at a quarter of a million sterling. Thro dead are reported from Albanv. In the Hudson and neighboring vall'evs the entire fruit crop, one of the most’ important in the Eastern States, is destroyed. The town of Oneida was under water’last night, with police patrolling the streets in boats.