The reader will wonder why, in such cases, the windows do not burst out, leaving the walls unhurt. This often occurs. But very great pressure would evidently act just as does powder in a blast: the rock is rent ere the tamping is torn out, though the latter has far less resistive power; while very violent explosives do not even need any tamping in order to utilize their force.
It would seem, then, that a house with open doors and windows has a better chance of weathering a tornado, whether in respect to direct impact of wind, or to the expansive force of air within, than a house which is shut up. Here, again, quite a number of instances can be adduced of houses caught suddenly thus by tornadoes and escaping unhurt, while houses upon either side were demolished.
But that the direct force of the wind on the Louisville occasion was very great is abundantly evidenced. Numerous are the apparently curious freaks that were noticed. A city paper, four days after the storm, contained the following:
“There are hundreds of the most interesting and miraculous incidents connected with the tornado, showing the queerest sort of freaks of the wind. A block of iron casting, weighing over one hundred and fifty pounds, was blown into the second story of the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southern Railway building, near the Union Depot. Nobody knows where it came from, and the nearest building from which it could have come is nearly one hundred yards away. Great sheets of tin roofing were dropped upon Dr. Barry’s farm near Turner’s Station, forty miles from the city, on the Short Line. In the ruins of a house on West Main street a clock was found clinging to the wall. It was a large
ON NINTH STREET, LOUISVILLE.