The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-04-24 00:00:00

HURRICANE IN AMERICA.

Under date Philadelphia, April 19, a Times' tele-
gram says :—" A hurricane on Sunday evening de-
stroyed the greater part of Marshfield, to the south-
we tof Missouri. The ruins afterwards caught fire.
Forty bodies have already been taken from the debris
of the town, and others are believed to be still buried.
Two hundred persons were wounded. Relief trains,
with physicians, nurses, and supplies, were to-day sent
there,frora several places."

A telegram from New York, under date April 20, says
"Further details of the recent destructive hurricane
in the Western States fully confirm the extent of the
disaster reported from 'Marshfield (Missouri), where
only fourteen houses now remain standing. Seventy-
eight persons have been killed, arid a number of
others are dying from injuries received during the
gale. Many are missing, and hundreds of families
have been rendered homeless. Surgeons and other
s.sistarvce are being sent to the sufferers from all
directions. It is feared that many have perished at
other places in Missouri. The hurricane has also
passed over the North-Eastern States, through Wis-
consin, Illinois, and Indiana, and across the lakes to
London, Canada, causing immense destruction to
property, and interrupting railway and telegraphic
communication along its whole track."

Another telegram to The Times, dated April 20, says :

Last night's telegrams report severe tornadoes on
Sunday in Missouri, lowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, and
Kansas, doing vast damage, with general atmospheric
commotions throughout the Mississippi Va.lley. The
severest tornado passed 160 miles in a north-east course
along.the James River Valley, Missouri. The worst
damage was done at Marshfield, a town of 1,500
people, 217 miles south-west of St. Louis. The
tornado appeared to the west of Marshfield, destroy-
ing several villages. Fifty persons are reported to
have been killed south of Springfield. It reached Marsh-
field at six in the evening, and demolished the entire
town. It then passed to the north-east along the
valley, disappearing about 110 miles north-e ast of Marsh-
field. When the relief trains from Springfield reached
there on Monday scarcely any one was found. Only
fourteen houses were standing, and all these were
damaged. Trees, 3ft. in diameter, have- been twisted
off. A large part of the ruins have been burnt. By
sunset on Monday 78 bodies had been taken from the
ruins, and 100 wounded had been attended to. It is
expected that many who have been badly hurt will not
survive. The work in the ruins progressed during the
night. Relief was also sent to the country south of
Sgringfield, which has been entirely devastated in the
tornado's track. The towns of Conway, Northview,
Granby, Warrenburg, Gray's Creek, and Cuba have
been severely damaged. Several railway trains were
wrecked on the Western and Missouri Railways, and
several lives are reported to have been lost elsewhere.
The nurlber of deathi will probably reach 150, when
all are reported. A severe storm also raged on the
lakes.
To-day's reports from Marshfield say that the dead
-4;11 being

may nmnber 100. Corpses are still , drawn from
tke ruins. Eye-witnesses describe the tornado as
frightful. It appeared as a black cloud, funnel shaped,
and lined with fleecy white, turning like a screw pro-
peller, with great velocity, destroying everything in
its path. It was about half a mile wide, and moved
with a terrific noise, twisting off the large trees and
peeling the bark from the small trees, blowing the
houses from their foundations, lifting cattle, hogs,
horses, sheep, and poultry into the air, and carrying
them long distances. The loss is estimated at 400,000
dols. At California, Missouri, the tornado killed 10
and wounded 30. At Champaign, Illinois, the storm
partially destroyed the State University buildings.
From Janesville, Wisconsin, 100,000 dols. damage is
reported.

The Standard, in a leader noticing the hurricane, re-
marks :—" The region visited by the relent hurricane is also
subject to the whirlwinds or tornadoes with which it has in '
some accounts been confounded. Indeed, after the great
Chicago fire, one occurred. Fires, it has been observed,
create such storms, in consequence of the strong upward
current, resulting from the great expansion of the heated air.
It is an historical fact that during the conflagration of
Moscow in 1812, the air becoming rarefied by the intense
heat, the wind rose to a hurricane so frightful that the Sound
of the rushing flames and the shouts of ,the French
soldiers *ere drownEd in the roar of the blast.
Some of the American tornadoes commit great havoc.
Hardly anything can withstand them. Huge masses of rock
are tossed about as if they were-leaves, oak trees are snapped
like-reeds, and large buildings are torn up from their founda-
tions, and the fragments carried for several miles. In a
tornado at N.atchez, in May, 1840, the houses 'were burst
outward, being drawn into the vacuum formed at the centre
of the whirlwind. Three hundred and seventeen persons
were killed in the city and on the river ; and in one which
visited Cook County, in Illinois, a few years later, a
house with nine persons in it was carried up imto
the air. In February, 1875, the village of llonsatonia,
in Missouri, was almost completely destroyed, though the
storm only lasted thirty seconds. Fowls are oftZn entirely
stripped of their feathers, and light bodies have been
whirled along by a tornado for its whole journey of twenty
mile. Happily, though the Mississippi Valley is t's..e
centre of these atmospheric disturbances, the storms visit
any one locality only at very remote intervals. Hence the
Missourian whose barn is levelled, and himself and family
hurled into the air, has a reasonable expectation that, should
he survive the ordeal, Colus has demanded ips last sacrifice
of him. Nor are tornadoes and their windy kindred alto-'s
gether without their value in Western political economy.
Like fires, they put a rising town to the test of its raison
d'etre. A fire or a storm sets in action the machinery of the
'struggle for existence,' and in the end the fittest survives.
. . Chicago, Sacramento, or San Francisco grows greater,
and finer, and broader-streeted after every fire. Brazos
Santiago, in Texas, was hi seven years twice effaced by a
hurricane; yet to-day it flourishes as a port of entry with a
commerce worth two millions per annum. But Thermopylre
or Eden once levelled, no one has the heart to rear it again.
By-and-bye it is deserted, its log houses and flimsy board
buildings moulder away, and in time good corns grown on
the site."