Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 June 1882 — THE IOWA TORNADO. [ARTICLE]

THE IOWA TORNADO.

The Extent of the Calamity—-An Appeal for Aid. Dks Moines, lowa, June 20. The following appeal for aid has been issued: To the* Public : After two days and nights spent in traversing the track of the tornado that swept over this State with such fearful havoc last Saturday night, and having reports from scores of the reporters of the Dea Moines .Register and Associated Press sent to all parts of it, I find the condition of the stricken people so piteous and so needful of instant and generous help that I send this appeal to the people of the United States in their behalf. The tornado made a swath of destruction through the thickly-settled portion of lowa some 150 miles in length, and an average of half a mile in width, extending from a point south of Ames, in the center of the State, and swept in the shape of a crescent to South English, in Keokuk county, in the Southeastern part of the State. We have the names now of sixty-nine dead and 500 wounded, half of the latter greviously hurt, and probably a fifth of them fatally. Over 300 families have had their homes totally destroyed, and there are now at least 1,500 homeless and in want. The loss in property will exceed $2,000, • 000 and may reach $3,000,000. In the town of Grinnell alone over $400,000 in property was destroyed, on none of which there was a cent of insurance, as in the case of fires. It will take at least $300,000 to put the people there beyond need and distress. It will take. SIOO,000 at once to put the wounded people in condition to be cared for. It will take $1,000,000 at the lowest to keep the sufferers from want and to help them to put the humblest of roofs over their heads. The people of Des Moines and of lowa are responding generously. The citizens of this city have subscribed SB,OOO this morning, and will make it $20,000 before night, m money, and are also sending provisions and clothing beside. But it will take the help of every humane city and town in the West and every liberal city and town in the East to put comfort and safety between these stricken people and further suffering and fatality. Grinnell is a town of New England people, a thrifty, intelligent people, and with the lowest rate of crime and illiteracy in the State and the highest rate of intelligence and morality. The rich towns of the East may well help these sons and daughters of New England in the distress and need of the utter calamity visited upon them so cruelly by this Moloch of the air, which has killed fifty of their people, destroyed 150 of its homes, maimed and mutilated 200 more of its people, many of whom will soon die, and all of whom must be cared for for months, and wiped out totally nearly $500,000 in uninsured property. lowa College has had all its buildings destroyed. its 400 students made homeless, and has suffered a loss of $75,000 in uninsured property. The condition of other towns and farming communities is fully as pitiable and helpless. All that the people of lowa can do will be done to alleviate the condition and repair in part the losses of the sufferers. But it will take $1,000,000 to do it, even to half-way comfort and recompense them ; and the people of the State* who have always borne their share and done their part in all national calamities, may fitly ask the people of other communities to help them in this hour of great calamity to many of the worthiest of its people, and to this I end ask my fellows of the press through the United States to place these facts before their readers, and to give their timely help to its sufficient purpose of raising and providing aid at th® earliest moment possible. The fury and power of this utter calamity were as indescribable in their mightiness of strength as their havoc and power were cruel and complete. Many people have left of their houses not a splinter as large as a finger, not a shred of furniture as large as a skein of silk, and hundreds have no clothing left except the night-clothes they had on. Cases of exceptional horror add exceptional pathos to the piteous whole. Women in pregnancy were killed outright, others forced to premature delivery, and little children had both parents killed and left maimed and wounded tbemEvery condition exists that most tenderly appeals to the pity of the human heart. The wounds inflicted by the debris that filled the air like chaos, by the electric balls of fire that seemed to traverse every inch of space and that exploded with fearfullyfatal effect, will, many of them, defy all skill and nursing even with the tenderest care. The fury of the storm, which was clearly of electric origin, and which, indeed, may be described as having been electricity itself, precipitated in chaos, may be understood from the statement that, in various places, it took up in its greater spirals or funnels houses a thousand feet high, and took up and carried large herds of cattle through the air for thousands of feet and dashed them down dead in heaps. Many thousands of cattle, horses, hogs and other animals now lie in the track of th® tornado, already rotting, and adding, in the hot weather, the horror of putrefaction to the foul and pervading odors that are being given off by the millions of tons of decaying matter left in the wake of the tornado. The horrors of the storm, the unspeakable cruelties that it inflicted, the pitiless woe of its coming in the night, when the dead were not known and the wounded could not be found, and the piteous state in which it has left hundreds of families, before prosperous, may not be described in words, but once known to generous hearts must command the instant sympathy of the liberal, and immediate help. Remittances may be made to Hon. J. B. Grinnell, at Grinnell, or the Mayor of Grinnell. I write from the knowledge of two whole days and nights spent on the scene of desolation and among the dead and wounded, and tell the facts of the multitude of horrors simply as they are, feeling that they will themselves best appeal to the country and most effectually aid the sufferers. J. 8. Claiikso.v, Editor Des Moines Register.

Terrible Power and Extraordinary Freak* of the Cyclone. No person would believe vere they told of the marvelous caprices of a cyclone, writes a correspondent of the Des Moines Register. It can only be realized by observation ; even then the senses are staggered. Prof. Myer, the old Signal Service observer, has given a theory of their movements which is confirmed by facts. It moves in funnel shape, with gyrating motion, making a large or small circle, and then performing a loop or quarter circle each 300 foet, and in this quarter, or small circle,'lies the terrible power defying everything on the face of the earth to withstand. The cyclone which struck Grinnell started apparently seven miles northwest, and with a rocking motion came bounding m a large swirl until it struck the northwest part of the city, when a leop was formed, which sucked everything into its vortex for a space of fifty rods wide and onefourth mile long. Whatever lay in this track was demolished. Houses, large and small, with everything in them were torn up and crushed to splinters and fragments, and strewn over the earth along the track. There was no wind to carry them away. Buildings standing just at the edge of the loop were lifted from the foundation, twisted out of shape or turned over. The contents were sucked out and the rooms left bare, even the carpets being torn from the floors. People were forced out of their houses with terrific force. One man was carried across two streets, over houses, through a window, and landed on a bed. Another was sucked out of his bouse, carried several rods, and lodged in a tree. A man named Bice, outside of Grinnell, and his little boy were blown out of the house and into a deep well. He climbed out, pushing his little boy before him. One house was whirled around, and a heavy timber forced completely through it, the furniture and contents torn out, except a glass lamp and globe, which hung unharmed in the parlor; not a vestige of anything else being left in the room. At another house, wrecked and devastated, tho clock alone stood on the mantel, the hands pointing at 8:48, the probable moment the blast struck it, and this time is confirmed by the watch of the student who leaped from a college window, and which stopped at 8:45. At another place where there was nothing left to denote a residence but tho cellar, a mirror unharmed was standing against the cellar wall, the only unbroken article that could be found. At L. C. Phelps’ house, himself and family of five persons attempted to go down cellar, but the suction closed the doors so they could not open them, and although the house was demolished except this room they escaped. Mrs. F. Taylor was carried from her own house and landed in the debris of the house of Mr. Graham. Her house was little damaged, but she was fatally hurt. Mrs. Griswold and her son were blown from their house, but in opposite directions. Mr. Foster, a farmer northwest of Grinnell, had twenty-five cattle lifted from a herd, carried sixty rods and dropped dead. One family in Grinnell were sitting to-

gether in a low room when tue house was taken from over their heads, carried off and crushed in one direction, and in a moment after they were whirled away in another direction. Prof. Magoun, nephew of the President of the University, was in front of Prof. Chamberlain’s house with a span of horses and carriage. He grasped a tree and held on. The carriage was whirled away and torn in splinters, the harness stripped from the horses, the horse® lifted into the air, and one dropped dead several rods away. The other has not been found. Large trees were broken near the ground, and the upper twisted one way around the trunk while a few feet distant the process was exactly reversed. Prof. Buck was in the southeast chamber. He started with his son to go down cellar when the whole of that side of the house was carried off, leaving the remainder but little damaged. He and his son leaped to the ground. In the tops of some trees was forced a new phaeton so tightly that it can only be cut out. It was doubled into a roll, and must have dropped there when the trees were bent downward. Horses and cows had timbers and splinters driven into their bodies. Felloes and tires of wagon wheels were to be seen with the hub and spokes gone. At one place where only could bo seen the mudcolored debris of a dwelling which had evidently been one of refinement and culture, the only thing left to evidence the fact was a beautiful untarnished rose in full bloom, a marvel in such surroundings. One man who was hurrying to protect his home, but too late, threw his arms around a tree, and while there a hors® and carriage were thrown over him and dashed to the earth beyond. Twenty-seven loaded cars on the Central road which had just come into the station from the north were struck in a loop of the whirl and turned over into the ditch toward the west, or face of the storm. The locomotive was lifted from the track and set on the ties right side up, while one mile east, a west-bound freight-train in motion was keeled over to the east, and the conductor and brakeman were killed. In some houses every inmate was killed or hurt, yet the house left, while the next house and its contents were utterly destroyed and broken into fragments, yet the inmates not seriously hurt. Between Mr. Roberts’ house and barn, which were totally demolished, was a large pile of stovewood, not a stick of which was moved. Mr. Roberts had about $75 in his house, including a SSO bill. After the storm he saw a piece of paper fluttering on the ground, and found it was the SSO bill, held by a little sliver of wood. The rest was not found. One of his buggies was taken, and another by the side of it left Thousands of instances of the marvelous caprices of this gyrating storm could be related. The victims know nothing of anything except their ewn experience. It was all over in three minutes, or before one could stop to think or act. It is discovered that over a space of four blocks, where every vestige of habitation is ground to pieces, the people saved their lives by fleeing to the cellar before the cloudburst came. The most of the dead were found where there were no cellars or they did not go to the cellar. It is therefore safe to assume that the cellar will be the quick resort hereafter on the approach of one of these besoms of destruction, beyond the power of the most fertile brain to describe. There is no safety in any building ejected by man. Nothing on the face of the earth can withstand the force of one of these monsters. A gentleman who witnessed the movement of the cloud, which could be done a few rods away, says it was a black mass, funnel shape, whirling along with a terrible rumble, but no wind. At the upper and in the center was a continuous lurid flame of lightning, and constant explosions, like hand grenades. Behind this was'a mass of water and mud. Every person lolled was so covered with mud that they could mot be identified until they were washed. The houses were plastered with mud, and mud covers every foot of the track of the cloud.

Tne Cyclone Described—Singular Incident® and Hair-Breadth Escape®. Much has been written with regard to the appearance of the cyclone, but I can not refra’n, in this connection, from reproducing, as nearly as 1 can, a description given me with unconscious eloquence by an eye-witness to the descent of the boreal monster upon the fated town. “The sun went down,” he said, “behind a bank of peculiar clouds. They were of fantastic shapes, and the last rays of the setting sun imparted to them a crimson, angry hue. I couldn’t help, for the life of me, thinking of the ferocious red eyes of an untamable bull dog, when I looked at the lurid spectacle. Night came on, and with it the storm. Incessant -lightning illuminated the northern and western heavens. The clouds grew blacker and the atmospheric agitation increased. The balloon-shaped cloud about wirch you already know could be seen approaching a quarter of an hour before it reached the town, and for at least five minutes before its arrival the roaring sound, which has been aptly likened to the rumbling of fifty freight trains across an iron bridge, filled the air with its ominous echoes. It was preceded by a violent wind, which blew down trees and drove people into the house. I was standing in an open space on one of the western streets of the town, and, feeling that I was safer there than I could be in a house, I determined to stay there, though I admit- I was frightened half to death. The rumbling roar came nearer, and the lowering mass seemed to reach out black arms to the earth, when, with a horrible, whistling shriek, the monster swept by within a hundred yards of the spot where I was rooted with amazement and fear. The raging thing swooped down upon the place, licking up everything in its path. Some of the houses were mashed down and swept along, whfie others were picked up bodily, torn to pieces, and the furniture and occupants lifted into the air, either to be hurled to the earth again or blown the Lord knows .vhere. '•The dreadful giant pursued its way, crushing, crunching and destroying with cruel wantonness. In the unearthly glare produced by the blazing lightning, which flashed wickedly and incessantly, and by the balls of fire with which the gyrating mass seemed to be alive. I could see the air filled with flying objects of every conceivable form, from scraps of paper to sections of roofs and floors, to the height of 400 or 500 feet, and I don’t know, how much higher. A house would be crushed like an eggshell and in less time than it takes to tell the materials that composed it would be climbing skyward with incredible rapidity. The air was charged with electricity, and where I stood the atmosphere was of a ghostly pallor. The whirling monster threw out flashes, and sparks, and balls as it passed along. Mingled with the frightful roaring of the cyclone could be heard the shrill, blood-curdling shrieks of women as they were caught up and borne away to their death. The demon concert is ringing in my ears yet The cyclone was probably a minute, or a minute and a half, passing me. It seemed an age. Nothing ever filled me with such unspeakable awe as this relentless riot of the elements—this merciless march of death.”

After the storm came a blinding, drenching rain. It was dark as the bottomless pit—so dark that the blackness could almost be felt—and through this inky air groped hundreds of men and women trying to find the mangled remains of the victims of nature’s cruel revolt The City Hall was converted into a morgue and the other public buildings into hospitals. Relays of doctors hastened to the scene of butcherv from all quarters. Mr. Moffatt, who had charge of the dead-house, tells of the spectacle that was presented there Sunday morning: “We worked half the night and all Sunday forenoon getting the bodies into shape for burial. There were forty of them ranged about in the room, nearly all women and ebudren. It being Saturday night, the men were mostly down in the business part of town making purchases for Sunday. The bodies when first brought in were unrecognizable. Dirt, sand, plaster and cinders were ground into the flesh, and in many instances it could not be washed or scraped off. It was as though the victim had been mashed into an ash-pit and rolled about under tremendous pressure. I can think of no other simile that will convey my idea of how they Koked. “The clothing was torn from the bodies in a few cases, but only a few. The shreds that were left clinging to the forms had to be cut away, however. That was the only way it could be done. Every single person brought to the morgue was mutilated in a shocking manner. Forms were sometimes hammered and beaten into shapeless masses. Spines were driven into the skull, protruding through the top of the head; backs were broken, or telescoped ; skulls crushed like egg-shells; eyes hanging down the cheeks; arms and legs torn from the bodies and hanging, disjointed, by shreds of flesh ; entrails protruding from frightful gaps, and vitals scooped out and detached entirely from the bodies. The picture was sickening. It took me two hours to lay out the mutilated remains of what had once been a beautiful young girl. Her head had been crushed down into her trunk and could only be

extricated by cutting away the flesh in a manner that tseemed almost barbarous. There was only one way of doing it, however. I pray God I may never be called upon to see another such a sight,” Astonishing stories of the freaks of the tempest are told, and I am in a fit frame of mind to berieve almost anything after having gone over the track of the cyclone for a dozen or more miles, and seen witn my own eyes the havoc wrought Who has not heard of the wind blowing hard enough to take the hair from a dog’s back ? That is one of the things 1 never believed. Neither could I quite swallow the statement that, out in Nebraska, the inhabitants have to wall up their wells to keep the hurricanes from blowing out the holes. The story about chickens having been denuded of feathers is scarcely less difficult to believe than the dog story ; yet to-day there is an olu nen and brood of chickens in Grinnell literally stepped by the wind of every feather, and as clean as the day they broke through the shell of the egg that gave them life, and lam told that flocks of prairie chickens have been seen plucked in a similar way. In Malcom a stable belonging to Bradbroox, a noted sportsman, was lifted from the ground, transported over the tops of a grove of trees, and landed at the foot of a hill an eighth of a mile away, and none of the three horses m the barn were killed, or even seriously injured. One of the animals was thrown through an open door, alighting “ right side up, with care,” in the mud. On three of the four corners of the two main streets in Malcom are flimsy frame buildings, and on the remaining corner stood a strong two-story brick block. The cyclone spared the wooden buildings, and knocked the brick structure into flinders. Up the street, half a block, was located a three-story iron and brick building owned’by J. H. Duffus. It was crushed like a shell, and pieces of the corrugated iron veneering blown to the outskirts of the town. A farmer living seven miles away brought in a piece of Duffus’ iron, weighing several pounds, it having been dropped in a field near his farmhouse. A one-armed student jumped from the third story of the brick dormitory and was carried a considerable way before he struck the ground, without a scratch. The student immediately ran down town and rang the alarm bell. Mud and dirt were blown into the sides of buildings still standing with such force that the disfiguring blotches cannot be removed. Gravel was not splashed up against the buildings, but driven in, as though discharged from a mortar. I saw a delicate mantel ornament taken uninjured from a mass of mortar and other rubbish in Grinnell, and within twenty feet of the place was a dark spot, showing where a young child had been driven into the earth ana crushed out of shape. A large house, owned by Lucius Sawders, in Grinnell, waslifted clear of the cellar, in which were concealed ten persons, and hurled upon the ground 150 feet distant, while a barn in the rear of the same lot was pitched the same distance in an exactly opposite direction. A young woman living less than a block from the Sanders residence was drawn through her bedroom window on the second floor, and gently wafted sixty yards away and deposited softly on the ground unhurt. Other members of the same household were treated with equally delicate consideration, having been blown to the same place without the infliction of serious injury.