Washed Away: How the Great Flood of 1913, America's Most Widespread Natural Disaster, Terrorized a Nation and Changed It Forever Read Free Page B

tornadoes could be described as having a personality, this one was a sociopath, and the details are disturbing. Mabel McBride, a 24-year-old elementary school art teacher, convinced her mother and young brother that they were safer huddling in a corner of a room than running outside. She was probably correct, or should have been, but when the roof blew away, the floors above collapsed, and a heavy board fell and struck Mabel on the head. She died instantly, but perhaps her actions saved her brother and mother, who survived.
    At the edge of the city and near the edge of the tornado’s path, most of the children in the orphanage, the Child Saving Institute, were indeed saved by virtue of being herded into the cellar, but two babies, Thelma and Cynthia, were sucked out of the windows.
    Just outside the Idlewild, a pool hall, trolley conductor Ord Hensley spotted the cyclone coming toward his streetcar, which was packed with about a hundred screaming passengers.
    â€œEverybody keep cool and lie in the center of the car,” shouted Hensley, grabbing two women who were boarding the streetcar and pushing them to the floor while dropping down with them. Nobody needed to be persuaded otherwise. Charles H. Williams, one of the passengers, managed a curious glance at the storm and a fleeting thought— It looks like a big, white balloon —as he watched houses blowing away and trees rocketing into the sky. But like every other passenger, he dropped to his hands and knees and joined the pile of humans that had collected onto the floor of the center of the car.
    Then the windows shattered. Trash, not rain, enveloped the car. A heavy wooden beam crashed through one window and poked out the other. Wooden planks, tossed by the wind, landed on top of the streetcar passengers. Then as quickly as it had come, it was over for the passengers, and Hensley, Williams, and the others staggered to their feet, unhurt.
    The patrons of the nearby pool hall were having their own problems. Eight African-Americans were playing at one pool table, with the rest of the crowd watching. Then everyone heard what sounded like a freight train roaring toward them, and the roof shot up into the sky and, along with it, the pool table. Seconds later, the pool table, along with the roof, came crashing to earth, killing most of the onlookers. A fire broke out next. The county coroner managed to rescue three of the men from the rubble and was likely haunted for the rest of his life by the sight of another man burning to death. In all, fourteen men died in the pool hall.
    Several blocks away, the conductor of the streetcar on Forty-Eighth and Leavenworth wasn’t as brave as Ord Hensley had been. This conductor saw the approaching tornado and jumped off, running for his life and leaving his passengers behind. One of them, Leon Stover, a thirty-year-old bookkeeper for a department store, moved behind the controls and tried to drive the streetcar and outrace the tornado. It was a nice try, but the twister swept past the streetcar, raining glass and splinters onto a bloodied Stover, who was suddenly aware of a father’s anguished cries. The father’s baby had been ripped from his arms and blown into the void.
    The Diamond Picture Theatre collapsed, killing thirty people inside. The Sacred Heart Convent was turned into firewood. Then the tornado turned its attention to William O’Connor.
    William was eight years old. He had just been sent by his older brother to go to the drugstore across the street from the family’s house to buy some stamps. A few moments later, Lawrence O’Connor, eighteen years old, saw the storm and shouted to the rest of his family—his parents and five other siblings—that a cyclone was coming and to run for the shelter.
    Lawrence didn’t go to the shelter. He chased after William.
    His little brother was reaching the pharmacy when Lawrence grabbed him and pulled him back across the street toward the