USA > Iowa > Calhoun County > Pomeroy > The story of a storm, a history of the great tornado at Pomeroy, Calhoun County, Iowa, July 6, 1893 > Part 3
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" It seemed to strike the earth, slantingly from above, crushing everything beneath it, then rising with a whirl, scattering the wreckage in all directions, one part of a house being blown to the south and another part west. The direction of the wind all day had been from the southeast. Violent thunder and lightning accompanied and followed the tornado, and heavy rain fell over a half hour afterward. All appearances in Pomeroy indicated a tornado, while two miles east it looked like a straight blow. The death roll at Pomeroy and immediate vicinity was 48 (on the roth inst.) and the wounded in hospital or under care of surgeons, numbered 75. The area of total destruction in Pomeroy is about one mile east and west, and from one-fourth to one-half mile wide.
"Observer H. B. Strever, of Larrabee, reports that the tornado formed three miles west of the center of the southern half of Cherokee county, or about the center of the southern tier of sections in Rock township. That would extend the track three miles west of dark line in Fig. V, which was made before the receipt of this report. It is probable, however, that the storm was not fully developed until it reached Pilot township, where its destructive effects were first noted.
"THE SCENE AT POMEROY.
" The Director visited the stricken town on the day following the disaster and again on the 14th, accompanied
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STORY OF A STORM.
on the latter date by Dr. George M. Chappel, Local Fore- cast Official of the United States Weather Bureau, and Assistant Director of the Iowa service. A careful inspec- tion was made of the débris and other visible effects, to determine, as far as possible, the nature and special char- acteristics of the storm which wrought such appalling destruction in so short a space of time.
"In Fig. VI we have a photo-engraving from a pen- cil sketch, showing a plat of the town, the area of total or partial destruction being indicated by the dark lines, which are also made to show the direction of the wreck- age of buildings, trees, sidewalks, etc. The arrows, in line with the débris, show the direction of the air cur- rents which formed portions of the whirling column. The long arrow, pointing southeastward, is at the center of the belt of total destruction. The town plat contains, as will be seen, about thirty blocks south of the Illinois Central Railway. The business houses are mainly located between First and Second streets, nearly all the private residences, together with the churches and schoolhouse, being south of Second street. From this statement it will be seen that eighty per cent of the residences were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable. Fully twenty blocks were swept clean of human habitation or other buildings, nothing remaining but the débris and a few mounds above the caves wherein many lives were saved. The blocks of the town are about 300 feet wide, and the streets the usual width. From this it will be seen that the average width of the belt of complete destruction is about 1,200 feet, and the track of total and partial destruction is 1,800 feet.
" The force of the storm was evidently much greater at the right than at the left of the central line. The fact should be noted, however, that the southern portion of
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. STORY OF A STORM.
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DEPOT
FIRST ST .
ILL CENTRAL R.R.
SECOND ST.
OMBEGO ST.
PRIST
YUGA ST.
SCHUYLER ST
ST
GENEVA
TREPT
HARRISON STR
FIG. VI .- PLAT OF POMEROY, SHOWING RUINED DISTRICT.
GER LUTH CH
ORK ST.
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STORY OF A STORM.
town did not contain as many residences to the square as did the central and northern tiers of blocks. Fig. III, which was photographed from the center of the belt, looking northeast, gives a general view of the area of total destruction, and the distribution of débris, and also shows a fringe of partially wrecked houses on the north.
" On the left of the central track (north side) all the wreckage of buildings, sidewalks, trees, etc., was carried to the southwest, on the line shown by the arrows in Fig. VI. At the northwestern point, where the storm first struck the town, a residence was pushed bodily six rods to the southwest, over trees and shrubbery, scraping the sod as it went, forming a bank of earth on its south side three feet high. A little over a block south of it stood the German Lutheran church, the largest and strongest structure in town. That was blown in pieces, and most of the débris was carried toward the northeast. At the extreme east of the town plat, near Third street, stood the Catholic church. An intelligent resident states that he saw that building lifted up bodily in the air, whirled around, and then dashed to the earth. The wreckage is strewn toward the southwest. A little south and east of that building stood another smaller church, which was wrecked and blown toward the northwest. On the ex- treme south side of the path of the storm houses were moved and loose débris carried towards the northeast, as shown by the lines and arrows in the diagram. In the central belt the smaller débris, and in fact all forms of wreckage, were found distributed on the direct line of the storm. This fact led some reporters to the conclusion that the greater work of destruction was done by a straight blow from the northwest. There was quite likely a straight wind of hurricane force following directly in the wake of the revolving shaft of destruc-
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tion, and that wind undoubtedly had a part in the dis- tribution and direction of the débris. On the flanks, however, the same degree of uniformity is not visible.
" The trees on the flanks, and the few gnarled and twisted trunks of trees and shrubbery left in the center of the track, all bore mute testimony as to the character of the storm. On the left they were partially denuded of bark on the north or northeast sides, and the broken or uprooted trees pointed to the southwest. On the right flank reverse effects were seen. And in the central por- tion of the track the stubs and trunks were almost wholly divested of bark, and bore the scars of contact with a great variety of flying missiles from all sides. In many cases the bark must have been ground off by attrition, the stubs being too heavy to have been peeled by twist- ing. By the same attrition fowls were divested of their feathers, numbers of which were seen in the débris. The human victims of the tornado's fury, the dead and wounded, bore evidence on their persons of the fact that the air was filled with an infinite number of swiftly mov- ing splinters, sand, mud, plaster, limbs of trees and other movable objects. In fact, some of them were literally tattooed.
" The business part of the town was not left unscathed. The brick drug store of Mr. Mullan, near Second street, fronting east, was badly wrecked. The glass front was broken in by the strong current from the northeast, and the entire south wall, a foot thick, was blown over to the southward. Another brick store in the next block east was also demolished.
" The value of caves was well attested by this storm. Seven or eight of these places of refuge in the devastated district sheltered forty to fifty people, protecting them from all harm. They are cheap and frail looking for the
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most part, built necessarily mainly above ground on account of the damp and undrained nature of the sub-soil, covered with mounds of earth rising four to six feet above the surface ; and yet they admirably served their purpose as tornado-proof structures. If every family had been provided witlı such a place of refuge, and had heeded nature's danger signals, no fatalities would have been recorded. Their- cost is trifling, and at such a time a very poor hole in the ground is worth more to a family than the richest gold mine in America.
" The cellars of Pomeroy afforded a measurable degree of protection to those who made timely flights thereto. We made diligent inquiry, but heard of 10 well-verified instance of fatal injury to people who took refuge in their cellars, but many were bruised by falling débris, or pierced by flying splinters, and few came out of the cellars wholly unscathed. Observing the amount of stones, brick, wreckage of furniture and other débris piled in the cellars, it seems a miracle that any person came out alive. Near the center of the track we were shown a cellar, 8 by 12 feet, wherein a woman and two children were saved from serious larm, and yet while they were crouched near the door at the west wall, a stallion weighing 1, 600 pounds was blown in from the east side and remained floundering in its death struggle until the storm had passed and the people were rescued. Columns could be filled with narrations of miraculous escapes, and other columns with the sad details of death and suffering.
" NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS.
"Indications of the uplifting force of the tornado have been noted at all points. It has been stated that in pass- ing over Storm Lake it lifted a column of water 100 feet
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high. This must be taken with a grain of allowance, for no one was near enough to its track to discern the column through the mass of vapor accompanying the storm. But the fact is well attested by reliable eye witnesses, that while the storm was crossing the lake the waters at the north shore receded rapidly, a hundred feet or more, leav- ing bare ground at the pier where the small steamboat lands. After its passage the waters rushed back with a tidal wave several feet high.
" A great number of intelligent people, who were near the path of the storm, testify to the fact that light struc- tures were lifted many feet, whirled around in the air and then dashed to the earth. In some cases they saw, or thought they saw, buildings whirled over and over, som- ersault fashion, as if the revolving column had for the moment whirled on a horizontal axis.
"Near the center of the track in Pomeroy a number of buildings evidently exploded outward, from the force of the expanding air within, the roofs being carried away, and the sides and ends of the structures were left lying as they fell toward the four points of the compass. On the north of the track, in the area of partial destruction, the buildings bore striking evidence of the expansive out- rush of air toward the south. Parts of roofs were carried in that direction, and windows were broken from the force within, the glass being carried outside. Numerous houses were seen partially wrecked, their southern sides or wings being blown toward the track of the tornado. There seems to be no room for doubt that the main destructive force in this storm was its tremendous uplift- ing power.
"As to the roaring sound of the storm there is abun- dant testimony. One man whose family were saved in a cave, remarked, as he urged them to flee, that it was
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either a very bad storm or a very heavy train of cars coming. It proved to be the former.
" Postmaster Mallory, of the town of Jolley, five miles south of Pomeroy, writes that the loud roaring noise was distinctly heard at his place. In his description, Mr. Mallory says the advance part of the cloud, as it approached Pomeroy, was rolling over and over, parallel with the ground. This was closely followed by two funnel-shaped masses swiftly revolving, the clouds from the southeast being drawn toward the center. The lightning and thunder were unusually violent."
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STORY OF A STORM.
THE TORNADO AT POMEROY.
The point at which Iowa's greatest tornado seemed to spend its force in one final, grand effort of destruction was at Pomeroy, a flourishing town of about 1,000 inhabitants located in the extreme northern part of Calhoun county. The land on which Pomeroy is built, as well as the coun- try roundabout for at least ten to twenty miles in every direction, was originally flat and marshy prairie land, with not a tree nor shrub to break the monotony of waving, luxuriant grass beneath and blue skies above. On ac- count of the unattractive topography of the country and the wetness of the land, this part of the state was one of the last sections of Iowa to be brought under subjection by the tillers of the soil, the early settlers having taken first what was considered the choicer lands where natural drainage is provided by the beautiful streams for which the Hawk- eye State is famous. Twenty years ago the section of country of which Pomeroy is now a prominent trading point was populated only by a few poverty-stricken " homesteaders," many of whom lived in sod houses and were compelled to use prairie hay as an article of fuel. But during these two decades a wonderful change has come. Those first pioneers doubtless had hardly a hope of gaining anything like a competency from the prod- ucts of their wet land, but it furnished a home for their families and they were content that hard, patient toil brought them enough to keep the proverbial wolf at least a short distance from their humble doors. In order to
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raise anything on much of the land a great deal of drain- age was necessary, and the task of subduing the soil that Uncle Sam, with doubtful generosity, had donated to those who would take and live upon it was, therefore, a doubly hard one. But, gradually and very slowly at first, the task was accomplished, though not without many discouragements ; and, as they progressed in the work, the fact began to dawn upon them that this black, ugly soil, properly handled, is simply a mine of wealthı, and this at about the time that some of the farms farther east, that were so specially favored by natural drainage, began to show signs of wearing out, or, at least, were found to not withstand sometimes the test of a droughty season. Many of these farmers, therefore, sold out their dry farms and moved over to the once despised and pop- ularly considered worthless, wet lands ; drainage by tiling came into vogue, and in a comparatively few years the poor pioneers of northern Calhoun and southern Poca- hontas counties became well-to-do farmers and stock- growers, with plenty of prosperous neighbors, with hand- some homes, big barns and fat herds upon every hand, while dense groves of trees and well-tilled, fertile fields transformed the wilderness into a landscape full of beauty. In the midst of such a country Pomeroy-twenty years ago a desolate way station in a swamp on the Illinois Central Railroad -grew, naturally and heathfully, to be the lively, well-built town of 1,000 inhabitants which it was on July 6, 1893, when visited by the terrible tornado. For some time prior to this catastrophe it was generally remarked that Pomeroy. was growing to be an uncom- monly bright and lively little city. During several seasons previous it had been enjoying a substantial and quite rapid growth, at a time when neighboring towns were mostly at a standstill. As the surrounding country
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developed and improved, the town enjoyed a greater volume, as well as a better class of trade, and the results of this were being shown in more home-like homes, in larger and more substantial business build- ings and in public improvements of various kinds.
A glance at the maps furnished herewith will give the reader a pretty good idea of the situation and size of Pomeroy. The business houses of the town are nearly all located on the central three blocks on the south side of First street, extending along the south side of First street and one block south, or nearly so, on Otsego, Ontario and Cayuga streets. The rest of the town plat as shown, south of Oak and Second streets, and east from Seneca to Cayuga, was almost solidly built up with homes, some quite pretentious and luxurious, many the more modest abodes of those who were simply " in fair circumstances," and others the humble though generally quite comforta- ble cottages of those who were considered poor people. But all were homes, with at least the full average of con- tentment, peace, prosperity and all things else that go to make up the life of a community of industrious, intelli- gent and happy people in free America.
What a wise provision it is that the future is rendered impenetrable to human gaze ! How well that fate unfolds not in advance the sometimes fearful scenes she has in store for us in that mysterious realm ! Had the average Pomeroy householder given a thought to the subject on the morning of July 6, he would no doubt have considered that no home on the face of the globe could be more secure, or at least stood less chance of being destroyed that day, than his own. There was no possibility of invasion by a foreign enemy ; no river nor reservoir of water was near that could by any chance turn loose the element of destruc- tion that devastated the Conemaugh ; neither was there a
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rival of Vesuvius near to enable history to repeat the downfall of the once proud Pompeii. Pomeroy's pros- pects, therefore, for continuing in the even tenor of her way so long as the rest of the globe remained intact could hardly have been improved upon, from the human point of view.
At the time of which we write Pomeroy yet showed signs of having recently indulged in holiday demonstra- tions of unusual magnitude, for Pomeroy people are patri- otic, and they had only two days before celebrated the glorious Fourth with characteristic vim and liberality. Remnants of bunting and flag decorations yet remained upon some of the buildings which were soon to be turned into hospitals for the wounded and dying. A large dancing platform, laid on the foundation walls for a new brick block in process of erection, helped tell the story of gay and festive scenes so recently enacted there- and only three days afterward some of the happy throng of dancers on that Fourth of July night rested upon cots on that same floor, suffering untold agonies and their light of life almost extinguished.
The Pomeroy disaster differed from most others of like magnitude prominent in history in that the people con- cerned in the former had no certain warning of impending danger. It is true that atmospherical conditions, espe- cially during the afternoon of the fateful day, were what was generally recognized as being favorable to the forma- tion of tornado currents, but as few people, comparatively speaking, had ever encountered a genuine tornado of destructive tendencies, not many were' seriously appre- hensive at this time. People were at their places of busi- ness, or at their work, as usual, and at supper time the evening meal was prepared and partaken of at the various homes and hotels, everyone wholly oblivious
GENERAL VIEW OF POMEROY RUINED DISTRICT, FROM THE NORTHWEST.
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of the fact that a mighty Juggernaut of destructive ele- ments was bearing down upon the little city to demolish its homes, and maim, mangle and kill its men, women and children.
Looking backward now, it seems almost that someone must have blundered ; that a neglect which is criminal must be charged to someone for failing to send by tele- graph a word of warning to the towns along the Illinois Central railroad toward which the terrible tornado was tearing its way with such fearful consequences. It is true that no one could foretell its exact course, and it is probable, also, that those who simply saw it at a distance and were in a position to send the warning had nothing like an adequate conception of the extent and destructive nature of the storm; but these facts, it would seem, would not wholly excuse them. Look at the possibilities for wholesale life-saving that must have been in the hands of someone ! At 6 o'clock the funnel-shaped cloud passed over Storm Lake, in plain view of many people in the town on the banks of the lake, and Pomeroy was not destroyed until just about an hour later. A word over the wires at the proper time might have saved a half-hundred lives and preserved the bodies of scores who were wounded. All the people along the track of the storm could not have been notified, to be sure, but warning could have reached residents of the towns in ample time that nearly all could have been ensconced in places of safety, for this storm demonstrated that caves and cellars afford almost absolute protection to life and limb from the tornado. Of course, the fatal neglect in this case was by no means intentional, nor was it even due to a lack of sympathy for human suffering ; and it is, therefore, entirely unexplain- able how no one at the several stations passed by the storm before reaching Pomeroy thought to send forth the 4
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alarm. But no alarm was sent forth, and the historian has to deal only with events as they occurred, not with what "might have been."
During the afternoon of July 6 the people of Pomeroy noticed heavy black clouds gathering in the west, and toward evening a heavy cloud of a lighter hue hung some distance above the southwestern horizon and seemed to be moving toward the mass of blackness in the west as if for mortal combat. The lighter cloud at one time assumed the shape of a huge crescent, and wonderful gyrations were performed by the two masses as they seemed to meet and tumble over and through one another. Still another cloud of threatening proportions was approaching from the northeast, and they who were in the habit of observing such phenomena remarked that the meeting of the three clouds would surely result in atmospherical disturbances of unusual severity. The day was oppressively hot, the atmosphere close and muggy. More than one expressed the prevailing opinion that it was "good cyclone weather," but apprehension in regard to such a visitation was so popularly considered a weakness that none was brave enough to advise a general movement for self-pro- tection in case of an emergency. The grayish fringe of the upper part of the clouds in the west and southwest indicated the presence of hail, and many people consoled themselves and others with the prediction that a severe thunderstorm accompanied by hail would be the extent of the threatened visitation. At 6:30 o'clock the heavens were entirely enveloped in clouds, but the approaching storm cloud from the northeast was still well defined and the wall of blackness in the west drew nearer and nearer to the fated town. It was at about 6:45, as nearly as can be ascertained, when a heavy rainstorm broke, accom- panied by high wind. In the course of ten or fifteen
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minutes there was a perceptible lull, and the majority of those who had sought places of safety thought the storm was over and came forth - many to a most terrible death. A few persons living on the west side of town saw at this time a sight which was awful, grand and harrowing in the extreme to even one possessed of the strongest nerves. The demon of destruction was at hand. The view of it was but for a moment, but that moment must have been fraught with a multitude of conflicting emotions to those who gazed upon this monster engine propelled by nature's peculiar forces and with death himself holding wide the throttle. And to the minds of those who viewed this wonderful something, as well as of those who have simply contemplated its awful work, the question remains alike unanswered,
What was it ?
To the majority who viewed the storm at Pomeroy, it did not seem to have the funnel shape that tornado clouds are supposed to invariably assume, although the closeness of the view may have rendered the full outlines undiscernable. What was seen was simply a rolling, whirling, writhing mass of greenish blackness, from and through which millions of tongues of electric flame darted and twisted in fearful, fantastic shapes.
Was it a huge ball of electricity, with a wonderful revolving motion, crushing everything in its pathway as it sped over the earth, anon shooting out shafts of the subtle fluid far beyond its main track, while everything was drawn as by a mighty magnet toward the vacuum which its passage through the atmosphere created ? This is the way it appeared to some, but what they saw was doubtless. the tail of the monster balloon-shaped cloud, which unquestionably did have a distinctly rotary motion and was certainly very heavily charged with electricity,
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The sensations experienced by different persons as the cloud passed over were widely dissimilar -this being accounted for by the unlike conditions existing at differ- ent points in the track of the storm. Those on the outer edges heard a great noise - the roar of the storm, which seemed to have a peculiar noise of its own, and mingled with it the crashing of timbers and the deafening claps of thunder-while those in about the center of the storm's course heard simply nothing. They felt for the moment as though there was no air in the rooms or places where they had sought refuge - which was doubt- less actually the case-and some of these, who were in caves or cellars, sought to open a door or window for purposes of ventilation, when the trouble was not that the rooms were closed up, but that the air had been sucked out.
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