Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 January 1898 — WIND’S AWFUL WORK [ARTICLE]

WIND’S AWFUL WORK

NEARLY FIFTY LIVES BLOWN ’ OUT AT FORT SMITH, ARK. Many Residences and Public Building* Ground Into Splinters-Dead • and Wounded Are Dragged from the Ruins by Survivors. . • Cut a Wide Swath. Fort Smith, Ark., was swept Tuesday bight from end to end by a terrific cyclone, and Wednesday the business portion of the town was in ruins, while the dead lay in long rows at the morgue. Fifty people, it is thought, perished in the fury of the storm. Coming from the southwest the cyclone swept Fort Smith completely, smashing everything along the way. The crash of falling houses was first heard at 11 o’clock . and l>efore the sleeping inhabitants could rise and refuge the full force of the storm was upon them. Buildings went down in heaps on every side. One large boarding house, struck by the full power of the tempest, broke in fragments like an eggshell. Fifteen bodies were taken from that boarding house Wednesday morning, and it is thought that at least twenty-five victims died among the falling timbers. The handsome new high school building, recently erected at a cost of SIOO,OOO, dissolved like a fabric of a dream. Two churches flew asunder when the cyclone pounded on their walls. Residences went crashing to the ground, stores and business blocks followed in one hideous ruin. In a few moments it was over—the storm had passed and the city was in ruins. In the blackness of the night, the uproar of the falling walls, the cries of the injured and the hurtling of flying timbers, the uninjured citizens were for a time completely panic-stricken. Toward mid, night, regaining their self-control as best they could, they began a systematic investigation of the damage done, and also an attack upon a number of fires which had blazed up among the ruined buildings. For a time it seemed as if this new danger would add equal damage to that done by the wild work of the storm. Several bodies, whether dca<j or living it is hard to say, were cremated in the flames before the fire department could overpowei the blaze. Morning came and revealed a scene ol horror and destruction. Among the wreckage, torn out of all shape by the storm, burned and blackened by the ensuing fires, were found more dead, more wounded. The hospital was full to overflowing. The morgue could hold no more. Scores of people who had missed relatives or friends in the wild uproar of the night joined with the searchers, directing, aiding, digging among the masses of masonry, rooting up the fallen timbers and dragging away the shattered beams. No estimate can be made at this time of the damage done to property. After tearing through Fort Smith the cyclone veered, whirled to the southeast and laid in ruins the town of Alma, nine miles away. It is reported that Alma is almost utterly destroyed and that several people have been certainly killed, while many are missing.