Great Disasters and Horrors in the World's HistoryGodbey, Allen Howard
History
Great Disasters and Horrors in the World's History
Godbey, Allen Howard
Disasters
Now, were such cases the exception--had not such instances happened in a
hundred other places similarly visited--there would certainly be cause
for perplexity. But the phenomena of the Louisville storm tend only to
establish the truth of a fact long suspected: that the most
[Illustration: LOOKING EAST FROM TENTH AND MAIN, LOUISVILLE.]
destructive effects of a tornado are not always attributable to the
direct force of the wind. A number of interesting incidents of the
Louisville storm will serve to illustrate a now clearly established
fact.
Mrs. Fitzpatrick and her family were in a two-story brick, 1433
Seventeenth street. They were all in an upper room and could not get
out. The walls fell outward, while the floor still remained in its
place. They climbed down unhurt.
James Smith (colored) lived with his wife and seven children in Congress
Alley, in the rear of Falls City Hall. Himself, his wife and three
children were crushed beneath the mass of bricks and timbers; the
remaining four children were taken out more dead than alive. Yet, the
house was not in the least moved from its place. The building was
crushed by the wall of the hall, which fell outward. Similar was the
fate of the laundry girls. The house in which they were was crushed by
the top of the wall of the Louisville Hotel, which fell outward, toward
the wind.
The colored Odd Fellows were holding a meeting in their hall at
Thirteenth and Walnut. The two upper stories were blown entirely down.
Several large circular holes were blown through the brick walls; one of
these in the side away from the storm. Several received more or less
injury, but not one was fatally hurt.
At 1315 Eighteenth street, was a magnificent new brick cottage. The roof
remained, but in the west wall were made “six holes, round as a dollar,
and large enough to admit a flour barrel.” It is added that the missing
bricks were nowhere to be found.
Finally, take the experience of a grocer on West Market street:
“I was inside of my store, and my clerk was there, too. Standing on the
pavement outside were policeman Harlow, a man named Charles Taylor, who
said he lived in Jeffersonville, a negro whose name I do not know, and
Carl Rice, an eight-year-old boy who lived with his parents in the rooms
above my store. When the wind grew high and the hail began to pelt, Mr.
Harlow attempted to open the front door of the store, which was closed,
to come inside for shelter. At that moment the tornado came in all its
fury. No one who was not in it can conceive of its terrific force. The
suction from without, as the full force came, was so great that it was
impossible to get the front door open. My clerk at work on it on the
inside and Mr. Harlow on the outside, were as powerless against the wind
as babies would have been in attempting to move a stone wall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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