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
Other peculiar feats of the wind were noticed. Some persons caught by
the storm, had no especial trouble in keeping on their feet; while
others were knocked about severely. One man was killed by having his
throat cut by a piece of flying glass. A frame house, standing near the
corner of Eighteenth and Maple, was shot full of holes by flying bricks
from another house a hundred yards away. A lady standing in the doorway
was picked up by the wind and hurled against a telegraph pole at a
distance of sixty feet. Another lady and her nephew, at the first shock
rushed into the street. They were caught up by the wind and hurled some
distance against a fence. They were found unconscious and both badly
hurt.
A frame house on Sixteenth street looked as if it had suffered
bombardment. Holes were cut in the weather-boarding by planks evidently
driven through the air endwise, and pieces several feet long had
penetrated and stuck hard and fast.
The building of the Louisville City Railway at Twelfth and Jefferson
streets was scooped through the middle, while the ends were left
standing. This was, perhaps, due to the explosive force of the air
within, which burst out the weaker portions. In a building of any
considerable length, the points most easily overthrown by lateral
pressure would naturally be found in the middle portions of the longer
walls.
At a stone-yard on Walnut, between Thirteenth and Fourteenth, the
immense iron “traveler,” with its locomotive--the whole weighing many
tons--mounted on an elevated track and used for transferring immense
blocks of stone from one side of the yard to the other, was blown into
the street and smashed to pieces, while close by, three small brick
buildings and one frame were left unharmed. Such cases show how the
larger obstacles cause the storm to somewhat overleap the smaller ones,
producing the “jumping” motion mentioned before. The narrow path of the
storm may be judged from the fact that no small portion of the good
people of Louisville were not aware of the ruinous tempest till they
read of its deeds in the morning papers.
The total damage done to property is estimated at $2,000,000. Much the
heaviest loss was among the great tobacco warehouses.
There has been some discussion as to whether any sort of buildings are
safe in a storm: but so long as the most violent tropical cyclones leave
many houses unhurt after a protracted gale, there is little fear that
the walls of our large buildings may not readily be made massive enough
to withstand any atmospheric storms.
The chief damage done to business houses was along Main, Jefferson and
Walnut streets; the damage to dwellings being greatest along Broadway.
The havoc on all the crossings in the limits of the tornado was
remarkable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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