A TERRIBLE TORNADO.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 August 1920, Page 9

A TERRIBLE TORNADO.

WHOLE TOWNS WIPED OUT. Death and wholesale ruin have been the harvest of two tornadoes which swept over eight American States. Scores of people were killed, hundreds injured, and ■thousands robbed of their homes, while the damage is counted in millions. These tornadoes were the culmination of a series of storms which had been raging for a week across the United States.

j Whirling in a huge cone-shaped cloud froiri the west, at a speed of eighty or ninety miles an hour, the northern visitation cut a wide zig-zag swathe of ruin I through the States of Missouri, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Illinois. Apparently its fury was 'concentrated around Chicago. In its wild course it Wiped several villages off the map. Solid brick and stone structures, such as churches and public buildings, were crushed into heaps of debris, ■and many fires were started. Wooden dwellings were twisted from their foundations and were turned upside down or whirled about like so many sheets of ! paper. In most cases the great wind came in a sudden darkness that shut out the sunlight, 01 else it was preceded by a torrent of rain. That great wind passed on aa swiftly as it came. For i forty miles around Chicago it left a belt of ruined suburbs, towns, and villages. Elgin City, which topographically is to Chicago what St. Albans is to London, suffered severely. There alone the damage was estimated at £1,000,000.

A theatrical company was rehearsing, when the theatre fell in on them,, and two members were killed. In the First Presbyterian Church the minister had just concluded his sermon with the strangely prophetic exhortation to his congregation to' be prepared, "for they knew not when they should be called." His hearers, numbering 1000, were about to leave -when-the storm broke. Many worshipper* remained to take shelter from the rain, and seventy-five children were in the basement schoolroom, when the roof of the structure collapsed, but, as,if miraculously, only three persons were killed.

One family was seated at table in itlie dining room on the ground floor of their house when, in a twinkling, the house was lifted clean over their heads and whisked out of sight, leaving them exposed to the torrent of rain, but unhurt. Edgerton, Indiana, with a population of 500, was virtually destroyed, and in Ohio the towns of Swanton, Greenville, and Raabs Corners were razed. Soldiers were called out to guard the Melrose Bank, which had its roof blown off, and their orders were to "shoot to kill" if any looting Avas attempted. So far as is known, the number of dead is as follows:—Ohio, 26; Indiana, 27; Michigan, 9; Atlanta (Georgia), 78; La Grande (Georgia), 50; Alexander City (Alabama), 11; Agricola, 5; West Point, miner, and Madon, 1 each.