Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 July 1881 — FRIGHTFUL TORNADO. [ARTICLE]

FRIGHTFUL TORNADO.

New < lm, Minn., Devastated by afyclone—l Sit nd reds of Strong Huild- ■ ngs t'nt Down to the Ground and Many People Killed and Wounded. A terrible tornado devastated New Ulm, Minn., a beautiful little city of 3,500 inhabitants, on the afternoon of July 16. Six hundred buildings were more or less damaged, some of them being totally wrecked, among them the finest business blocks in the city. Thirteen people were killed outright in New Ulm, and some twenty or more wounded more or less severely, several of them fatally. The storm made its appearance at 4 o’clock, and it could be distinctly seen approaching in two separate columns, one moving upward while the other appeared to descend from the clouds, whirling with terrible rapidity. One instance is told of a man and his wife and child who were in his dwelling adjoining his place of business when the storm struck. Both buildings were swept away, and, whew the man found his wife and child, twenty minutes after, both her legs were broken and the child’s foot was crushed. Numbers of buildings struck by lightning caught fire, and the town would have been destroyed in this way but for the rain, which descended in torrents. Eye-witnesses state that the scene during and immediately after the storm was fearful to contemplate and beyond the descriptive powers of the most graphic pen. People who were out on the streets at the time were literally blown away ; and numbers were wounded by the flying debris. Whole sections of tin roofing were sent sailing through the air by the fury of the storm, and twisted and crumbled up like paper. There is scarcely a building, public or private. that did not sustain some injury, while manv residences and business houses are total wrecks, the timbers being broken into kindling and scattered over the prairie. Not less than 100 horses were killed, many lifted bodily and carried long distances. The farm machinery depot was totally wrecked, and the machinery, including fifty self-binding reapers, were shivered into splinters. A new two-story brick building was carried away so clean that not a vestige remained except the cellar and foundation walls. A boggy was carried completely over the twostory si one jail. The county is peopled almost wholly by Germans, forty-eight of whom were in Minneapolis at the time attending the Tumfest, and none of them knew of .the catastrophe until next day, when all left immediately for their ruined homes, with no knowledge as to whether they would find family, friends or property. A correspondent who visited the scene of the disaster gives the following description of the terrible ruin wrought: The first p'ace any effects of the storm were seen was about three miles west of New Ulm. Here it tore down a house and killed a number of cattle and horses. The family saved themselves by going to the cellar before the storm struck. From where the storm struck the railroad track the ground is lined with bedding and furniture, wagon wheels, farm machinery, etc. Thfi heads of wheat were cat off as clean and

smooth as though done with a heading machine. From theplaca where the storm first ■truck into New Ulm everything was swept for a width of about one mile. The sight was sickening in the extreme. Trees were torn up by the roots and carried no one knows where, and not a house or bam was left standing in the line of the storm from where it first struck until it reached New Ulm. A gentleman, who stood on the bluff two miles north of New Ulm and witnessed the cyclone, says it was the grandest, yet most terrible, sight he ever witnessed. He says one cloud came from the northwest and one from the northeast When they met it appeared to him to be a contest as to which should have the right of way. The storm struck New Ulm at 4:48, and lasted just twenty minutes, and in that brief time not less than $300,000 worth of property was destroyed, and a number of persons killed and many wounded. During the storm there was a perfect blaze of fire balls. It would have been almost as dark as midnight bad it not been for the continued flashes of lightning. The storm extended through Nicollet county, through the towns of West Newton, Wellington and Severance, devastating a tract of country a mile wide and forty miles long. Six lives were lost at West Newton and six at Wellington. The property damaged at West Newton alone was estimated at $500,000. A dispatch Horn New Ulm says the rebuilding of tne town “ is now under way, and every man, woman and child is taking part in the great work of rebuilding. A great many of the buildings which were unroofed are being repaired so as to afford protection to the hundreds of citizens whose homes were entirely swept from the earth. “Henry Villard has given $1,500 totho relief fund. SI,OOO has boen raised at Milwaukee, and Sr. Paul and Minneapolis have pledged $5,000 each. The number of deaths by the cyclone has swollen to thirty-four.”