Jackson County IL Archives News.....North And West End Of City Are Hardest Hit In Terrific Storm On Wed., Fire Also Damaging March 21, 1925
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The Daily Independent Newspaper, Murphysboro, IL March 21, 1925

PUBLICATION RESUMED

    This is the first issue of the Daily Republican-Era to make its appearance
since the tornado struck Murphysboro Wednesday afternoon.  We have been eager to
supply our readers and friends with a paper for the past two days, but were
unable to resume work at this office until ten o'clock this morning due to the
fact that we have been without power until that hour.

    This edition has been hurriedly published with a much reduced force at work
today.  However, a sincere effort has been made to secure only reliable news and
data concerning the storm and its effects.




North And West End Of City Are Hardest Hit In Terrific Storm On Wed., Fire Also
Damaging

    Death and destruction such as the human imagination cannot picture, flashed
from the sky at 2:30 o'clock Wednesday afternoon and within three minutes
Murphysboro lay devastated in the wake of the worst cyclone (unreadable), a loss
of life that has appalled the nation and more than a thousand maimed.

    Within five minutes while torrents of rain fell, tongues of flame leaped
upward from a score of points in the wreckage from west of the Mobile & Ohio to
the northeast section near Illinois avenue and Seventh street.  A strange
rapidly shifting wind scattered the flames fiery tongues north up the levee,
east up Walnut street, from Walnut to the Maryland.  Before dark there was an
unbroken line of fire extending from Seventeenth and Walnut north and northeast
to Seventh street north of Illinois avenue, about a mile and a half, and fire
appeared certain to destroy what was left in the business district in the east
part of town.

    Dynamite and the combined desperate fighting of the fire pumpers from Cairo,
Murphysboro, Carbondale, Anna, Ziegler, Benton and Herrin finally got the upper
hand, hours into the night, but Thursday found the subdued and sullen semicircle
of flames.  A pumper from East St. Louis rolling in at 4 a.m. Thursday and stood
by ready and willing.  The $10,000 la France pumper of the Herrin department was
a charred ruin where it was caught in the alley east of the Maryland and destroyed.

    As citizens unhurt rushed up to the wreckage of schools, Shoe factory, M & O
shops, and other big buildings they met injured children and workmen, and some
unhurt, coming out, and the rescue work was on.

    Many persons downtown were watching an evil looking black-green cloud in the
north, and some looked to the southwest from whence cyclones come.  There they
saw stratas of air currents, spreading in different directions, then milling,
and those who had seen one knew a cyclone was right onto Murphysboro, two
minutes later the twisting demon, driving white clouds down to the earth, was
sweeping across Walnut street in the business district.  As the writer turned
the First National Bank corner he saw it driving across Walnut far out toward
Twenty-second.  Attempting to reach this office, he raced to Twelfth, watching
the twisting demon hurl tin roofing, telephone, telegraph and electric poles
across Walnut.  As he reached the RATHGEBER building the big pole at the corner
crashed its mass of live wires down in front of him and the Tower and big bell
on the city hall just behind him crashed to the sidewalk and street.  He entered
the RATHGEBER store and noted that it was 2:30.

    Hardly more than two minutes did the main fury last, but for another minute
things crashed about outside.  Emerging into heavy rain it was seen that Walnut
was a mass of tangled wires, poles, automobiles, roofing, etc.  On finding an
opening in the wires at the alley west of Thirteenth, the reporter ducked
through and ran north.  Someone shouted, "The school fell on the children, the
Logan school."

     A race through clogged alleys and streets, then across to Fourteenth, and
came into view a stream of school children running from the terror, then the old
Logan school wreckage.  A few men and several frantic mothers looking for their
children.  The numbers grew.  The east half down stairs had held up the wreckage
from above and most of the pupils there got out, many bleeding.  Up the brick
pile on the south some men were digging children from under the brick on the
second story floor.  Most of them, at the start were able to climb down assisted
by two men each, a few had to be carried.  Then a dead pupil, two, three, four.
 There Police Chief Joe BOSTON found his little daughter, dead.  From up there
the workers could see the fire fiend in twenty different places.

    By that time the crowd had grown.  The reporter ran to his own home, then to
where other dead ones might have been caught, dying in wreckage.  This run went
to Lucier street, thence to South Fourteenth, thence on the way to the high
school.  At Nineteenth a friend said he had seen a relative safe two blocks from
the school.  Just one of many mistakes.  The boy was dead in the high school.

    Nineteenth into the horrible devastation, to the Mobile & Ohio shops which
had fallen in on the workmen, then caught fire.  Several dead already had been
taken out, others had to be rescued dying, and some terribly injured.  To the
west was the wreckage of the Longfellow school where workers were busy.  

    Up to this time it had been impossible for vehicles to traverse the streets.
 Rescuers placed badly injured on wrecked doors, anything, and carried them,
often a mile, to downtown and a doctor.

    Over there all that was left of the Reliance mill was the two round, steel
elevators, father to the north, ruins of the Anchor ice plant, Standard oil,
Blue Grass Creamery.  Along the levee fire was eating fallen buildings,
including the two Borgsmiller wholesale houses there and the Blue Front hotel. 
The M & O passenger station was unroofed, father south the shoe factory, the
third floor blown in on the workmen there.  To the west as far as the edge of
the city scarcely half a dozen houses standing.  To the north as far as the city
limits none-just a solid mass of splintered, shattered homes.

    The fires were gaining.  Men were clearing a narrow way in some streets but
when the fire trucks got out after the debris had been cleared away from in
front of the city hall, there was no water pressure.  It was learned that the
roof and part of the walls of the new power house had fallen in. injuring
workmen and allowing all steam to escape.  Two hours later steam had been gotten
up in the old power house and water was being  pumped into the mains, direct
from the river.

    Meanwhile it had been learned that every school in the city had been hit. 
The Logan and the Longfellow worst of all.  Many died in their wreckage.  The
Lincoln was badly damaged The Washington unroofed and part of the walls torn,
the Douglas damaged, St. Andrews partly unroofed, the roof falling in the yard
where 350 children played two minutes before.  There only two were
hurt--slightly scratched from broken window glass.  None was hurt at the
Washington.  The old assembly at the high school and the new gym roofs and part
of the upper walls had fallen in, carrying death and injury.  Bernard SHELEY was
the first to die there, knocked unconscious and passing away in five minutes. 
Miss Frances HAMMER died two or three hours later.

    Wounded, injured, maimed, everywhere.  In all these places and in ruins of
the homes.  Ambulances, trucks and autos for the same purpose, began scurrying
to and fro, dashing about where narrow passages had been cleared.

    The hospital filled to overflowing, emergency hospitals were established at
the Presbyterian church, the K.C., Odd Fellows and other halls opened to the
homeless.  Men and women worked fast and hard.  The rattle of ambulance bells
and the honk of horns became continuous as they sped out and brought in more and
more injured.  Murphysboro doctors did the best they could until the world at
once came to the aid of Murphysboro.  From St. Louis all the way to Murphysboro,
the M & O and I. C. gathered doctors and nurses and workers and the
accommodation trains.  From then on they kept coming from Chicago, from Quincy,
and from many towns.  Carbondale doctors had gone to DeSoto, which had been
almost wiped out and where many were dead and injured.  Later it was learned
that Gorham had been more completely wiped out.  Bush, West Frankfort and
Parrish had suffered.

    Volunteers workers arrived.  The state and nation were in line and Thursday,
all day long, the rescue work went on, and all night.  Then all day and all
night Friday, and on Saturday they were still bringing in the dead and wounded.
 And acres and acres of homes had burned after having been razed by the cyclone.
 Many more acres of debris had not been raked for the victims.  It may be two or
three weeks before every bit of wreckage has been made to reveal what lies beneath.

    Friday a few funerals occurred, a few bodies were sent away for burial and
many graves were dug.  Saturday many graves were being made and hearses were
busy all day--trips out to St. Andrew's cemetery and Tower Grove.  Undertakers
and volunteers of this city, undertakers and embalmers from elsewhere, labored
without rest from Wednesday till Saturday, bringing in the injured, getting the
dead, helping hundreds look for their missing--many of whom were found in one
morgue or another, and today burying their dead.

    And it was found that of all the devastation, none could exceed that of the
North Eleventh and Ninth over to the northwest limits of the city where not a
building remains and where the death toll was awful and the injured hundreds.


Additional Comments:
Widely considered the most devastating and powerful tornado in American history,
the Great Tri-State Tornado ripped through Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana on
March 18, 1925. In its 219-mile-long wake it left four completely destroyed
towns, six severely damaged ones, 15,000 destroyed homes, and 2,000 injured.
Most significantly, 695 people were killed, a record for a single tornado.

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