Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 70, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 May 1899 — SLAIN BY CYCLONE [ARTICLE]

SLAIN BY CYCLONE

Scores of People Left Dead in the Wake of the Wind. HUNDREDS HOMELESS < Awful Exteut of the Storm’s Havoc in Missouri and lowa. Clean Path Swept Through Kirksville, Mo.—Nearly 100 Dead and List of Injnred May Be 500—Fonr Hundred Houses Laid in Snlns—Tornado Leaves a Trail of Destruction for Over Twenty Miles—Several Towns Struck. Two cyclones left trails of death behind them Thursday in Missouri and lowa. One swept through Newtown and Kirksville, Mo., just at nightfall, causing immense destruction of property and appalling losb of life. The lesser storm struck the Soldier river* valley in western lowa about midnight on Wednesday night, wrecking the country and smiting with wounds and death the people in the vicinity of the town of Ute. The Known Dead. At Kirksville, Mo : 45 At Newtown, Mo 20 At Ute, lowa, and vicinity. 5 Some reports from the stricken districts made the total number of injured exceed 500, and figures of the killed varied also, but it is impossible at the time this is written to give accurate details. The sky emptied its fury jn a gigantic cyclone upon Kirksville, tiie town made famous by Osteopathy, at 6:20 o’clock at night, while most of the inhabitants were at table. The entire east side of the city was wiped clean. More than 100 dwellings and business houses wgre totally destroyed. Several of the wicked buildings took fire, adding difficulty and danger to the work of rescue. Mayor Noonan Friday morning said the death list would reach 75. The tornado approached Kirksville from the southwest, and passed only two blocks from the heart of the city. Several public institutions were just outside the storm zone, otherwise the loss of life would have been Aore appalling. A broad, dean path, nearly a quarter of a mile in width, lies through the town, as smooth as virgin prairie. Probably 400 houses are scattered as fragments somewhere beyond the town in woodland and prairie. In the heavy rain following the people who escaped turned out to rescue the injured and hunt the bodies of the slain.

Surgeons, professors, operating staff and students, men and women of the American School of Osteopathy, together with all the druggists in the town, formed rescue and hospital corps.# Rescuing corps lifted roofs and searched the ruins of houses all along the edge of the death track not entirely demolished for the wounded, tbe dying and the dead. Half a dozen wrecked dwellings took fire immediately after the cydone had passed. The storm’s coming was announced with a roar and a deep muffled rumble of distant thunder. There was a suction from both sides, and before the advandng column, While a steady crunching, crackling, grinding noise was heard distinctly above the roar of the elements a mile from the path of the cyclone. The cyclone approached Kirksville from the southwest. At a distance it seemed to be making for the fair grounds, and people at the American School of Osteopathy, on the west side of the town, watched its coming for two minutes in fear that it was bearing down upon them. Before reaching the town Bmits it veered further east, however, and cleared the State Normal School without touching it. Patterson’s extensive nursery, just west, was swept down to bare soil. The course from that on was through a well-built-up section of the town, made up mainly of low houses, and largely populated by students of the normal school and American School of Osteopathy. Marcus Ward’s seminary for young women was a couple of hundred yards east of the storm’s path. A hotel building close to it was demolished.

A score of guests stood upon the porticoes and at the dining room windows of the Still Hotel, half a mile west of the storm’s path, and saw it sweep through the town. Roofs blew ahead of the blast like leaves, seemingly far in front of the revolving snout a full hundred yards in the sky. y One horse was blown out of the shafts of a road wagon, which lodged against the front of a house in the edge of the wind’s track. No one knows what became of the animal. Members of households disappeared with a partial demolition of homes, while others remained unhurt among the debris. Along the edge of the storm’s path holes are seen through frame houses as if punctured by cannon balls. A second edition ot the cydone followed the first in about twenty minutes. It came as an ink-black cloud widely distributed and covered the whole town. Many sought refuge in cellars. The tail end of the cyclone did not break upon Kirksville, however, seeming to go by overhead. It is believed generally that the second cyclonic wave dropped to the ground before traveling mucn'further on its journey. The heavens became black for fifteen minutes, after which a heavy rain fell for an hour and a half. By 8 o’clock the sky was clear and starry. . Mayor Noonan telegraphed to every station between Bloomfield, lowa, and Moberly, Mo., for surgical assistance. Undertakers wired St Louis and Chicago rush orders for coffins. Scores of families will be rendered absolutely destitute in addition to losses by injury and death. The reports from country districts indicated that many lives were lost in the surrounding farming districts. Henry Lowe and three children, living three miles north of Kirksville,. were crushed beneath the timbers of their wrecked home. Several other members of the family escaped injury. Other fatalities are

__ . __ • _ 1# # _ - p cycione, were that twenty persons had been killed and between thirty and forty injured. The entire eastern half of the town was destroyed. The path of the storm was About 500 or 600 feet wide, and hardly » dwelling in its course escaped. Frame houses were lifted from their foundations and crushed like eggshells. The more substantial buildings were partly wrecked, and half a hundred people at least are homeless. The storm blew down the telegraph wires In and about the dty and washed away the bridge over Medicine creek, a small stream just south of the town. A terrific electrical storm followed the tornado, and the excitement was intense. Women and children ran about the streets shrieking for their parents and loved ones, and men searched the ruins in the drenching rain, hoping to locate the bodies of victims. Houses of survivors were thrown open to those who were rendered homeless, and everything possible was done to care for the injured. Fully one-third of the business portion of the dty was destroyed. TWO DEVASTATED TOWNS, Kirksville, the County Seat of Adair County, Missouri. Kirksville is the seat of government of Adair County, and is seventy miles west of Quincy, 111. It is situated in a fertile grain, fruit and atock growing district, and there are coal mines eight miles distant. It has two railways, the Wabash and the Quincy, Omaha and Kansas Olty. There are several good hotels, an opera house seating 800 people, and a fine Masonic hall. The North Missouri Normal School is also located there. The town la most widely known as the seat of the American School of Osteopathy, teaching a new system of medicine discovered or invented by Dr. A. T. Still. This institution has attracted students from all over the country, and has added much to the growth and prosperity of the town. Newtown lies in the extreme southwestern part of Sullivan County, Mo., and west-northwest from Kirksville. It is • manufacturing point of considerable local importance, the principal industries being in furniture and lumber. There were several churches and store buildings in the place, besides the factories. The viUage is on a branch of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad.

STORM IN lOWA. Soldier River Valley Is Swept and Several Lives Lost. The Soldier river valley in the counties of Crawford and Monona, lowa, was Bwept by a tornado about midnight, the severest ever known in the devastated section. The list of killed and injured is long, while the property damage is large. Dozens of people scattered throughout the prosperous farming country of the Soldier river valley were hurt more or ltess by flying debris. Great quantities of dirt were scooped up and carried along with the force of gunshot. The path of the twister was nearly a mile wide, and is as clearly defined from its entrance into Monona County along the winding course of the Soldier river for a distance of twenty miles, as if cut out by an army of men with modern machinery and scoop shovels. Trees two feet thick were twisted off by the hundreds and in many cases fulled up by the roots and carried miles away. In some cases many trees are found away out of the twister’s course, piled high with other debris dropped by the wind and all torn into a million splinters. The large residence of George Furne was the first building of importance destroyed. It was right in the center of the cyclone’s track. The house was cut to pieces like so much kindling wood. The five daughters were found in as many different places after the storm had passed by their father, who was himself badly hurt. The mother was not found until daylight. She Jay beneath some of the debris of her ruined home. A fence rail was forced through her body. She lived several hours despite her awful wounds.