CYCLONE’S HEAVY TOLL OF LIFE

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 41, 11 May 1927, Page 1

CYCLONE’S HEAVY TOLL OF LIFE

MISSOURI TOWN DEVASTATED

BUSINESS CENTRE A GHASTLY TANGLE

The cyclone which swept the mid-western . _ p r P “e we're MS, MS'Yn *>""7“ 5 P :r/t e o d be Jo h o' totai

gy cable- — Press Association.—Copyright Received 8.50 a.m. NEW YORK, Tuesday. The latest figures for the weekend cyclone show that 200 are known to be dead in Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Illinois, with scattered deaths In other mid-western States. At present it is estimated that over 800 are injured. Relief work has now begun, with the whole area taken over by National Guardsmen. The damage to property will amount to millions of dollars, that of poplar Bluff, In Missouri, alone being estimated at 5,000,000 dollars. x This town, with a population of 10,000, suffered most seriously. A hundred persons were killed and 250 Injured. The business section was almost demolished, and 60 bodies have already been recovered.

So far only 21 are identified. Long lines of relatives and friends are passing through the temporary morgues, but the task of identification is rendered difficult because manv of the bodies are mangled almost beyond recognition. School buildings and churches are serving as temporary hospitals for the injured, as only one regular hospital is left standing. Broadway, the town’s principal business strefet, which was previously lined with neat brick buildings, is now a ghastly tangle of telephone and telegraph wires, twisted timbers, and fallen walls. An occasional building withstood the storm, but most of them were unroofed or wrecked. Bvery hotel is either demolished or badly damaged.

Five children were killed in the wreckage of one schoolhouse. —A. and N.Z.