Great Disasters and Horrors in the World's History

by Allen Howard Godbey

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.

It was observed that the buildings on the north sides of the streets parallel to the river suffered most. These more nearly faced the advancing storm, while the open street in front of them gave the wind an increased advantage. This will be better comprehended if the reader will recollect that the tornado of the northern hemisphere rotates in a direction contrary to the hands of a watch. So in the case of one moving eastward or northeastward, the wind on the front edge is blowing directly northward or northwestward. So the current, slightly broken in passing through a block, regains its strength somewhat in slanting across the next street, and assaults the next block with renewed force.

Louisville, though the principal sufferer by the storm, was not the first. The tornado formed some distance to the southwest of the city, and on its devastating march toward Louisville mowed clean a wide swath through the woods, and fell upon the beautiful suburb of Parkland. The Mayor’s two-story brick residence parted with its roof at the first shock. The Mayor’s wife was up-stairs in bed, ill of pneumonia. Her husband and another man seized the bed and carried her into the yard. Scarcely was this accomplished when the full force of the storm prostrated the building.

It may be noticed in this connection, that the most destructive wind is never in the first shock, the parting gust being usually the most damaging. Doubtless this is because the expansion of the atmosphere within the house at the moment the center of calm passes over it weakens the building to such an extent that the rear of the tornado, striking the house from the opposite direction, readily overthrows it. No such peculiarity is observable in a forest. The trees, containing no vast quantities of air, are usually felled by the first stroke, if at all.