DESTRUCTION IN LOUISVILLE
Disaster by tornado is not so easy to avoid as disaster by flood. One of the most destructive storms of recent years was that which swept over Louisville, Kentucky, in the evening of March 27, 1890, killing 113 persons, injuring 200, and destroying property to the amount of $2,500,000. The storm came from the southwest and cut a path through the heart of the city three miles long and nearly a half mile wide. Nearly every building in its course was leveled to the ground or otherwise damaged. Outlying towns were also devastated by the storm, and flood calamities occurred simultaneously along the Mississippi.
About eight o'clock the storm was raging with tremendous force. The rain fell in sheets, the lightning was constant and vivid, the wind blew ominously. The streets were soon miniature rivers, and telegraph and telephone poles began to snap. By 8.30 there was alarm all over the city, but before any measure of safety could be adopted the body of the mighty tempest dashed itself on the houses along Fifteenth Street and tore itself diagonally across the city, leaping the river at Front Street to Jeffersonville.
The passage across the city was not continuous and in uniform direction, but the storm lifted itself up, fell with furious force on a block, then rolled over into adjacent blocks, when it rested a moment, then dashed furiously up and forward again, launching to the right and left with demoniacal whimsicality.
Everything it touched suffered. Church steeples fell, crushing beneath their weight the buildings over which they had stood guard. Wrenching warehouses to fragments the tornado passed to the river front, leaving a broad swath of wreckage and dead bodies. The belt of destruction extended from the west side of Seventh Street as far as Ninth and Main Streets, and an equal width across to the point where the city was first touched. Along this path were demolished homes and wrecked business houses—the annihilated work of years. On the river the storm found full sway. The tawny water of the swollen Ohio became a lake of seething foam. Steamboat after steamboat was driven from its moorings and tossed like a drop of spray in the boiling stream.
CITIZENS MADDENED WITH GRIEF
Almost immediately after the storm had passed thousands crowded into the distressed district; maddened men and women fought and struggled through the debris trying to find some loved relative or friend. From every side arose the groans of the wounded and dying. About the Falls City Hotel groups thronged waiting for news.
Fires burning in several places added to the horror, though no great damage was done by these. Crushed and blackened ruins marked the spot of the Union Depot, which collapsed during the storm, crushing a train which was just ready to depart. Every building, tree and telegraph pole in the district struck was leveled, and almost all the railroads entering the city were obliged to suspend all passenger and freight traffic.
RESCUE, RELIEF AND RECONSTRUCTION
The work of rescuing the mangled dead was bravely carried on the following day and before many hours the American genius for organization, order and action had met the demands of the overwhelming disaster. While the dead were still lying awaiting burial, plans were made to rebuild and resume again the work of life.