Butler citizen. [volume] (Butler, Pa.) 1877-1922, 1882-06-28
TheIowa Catastrophe.

As fuller particulars are recelVeu
Of the devastation caused in Iowa by
the tornado of Sunday week the more
terrible does the catastrophy prove.
We are used to hearing of these tre-
mendous wind storms of the West
aud their fearful power, but there has
been none before so destructive as
this. The forests have been laid low
in Missouri and the farms in Kansas !;
houses. fences and barns often contrib
ute to the debris which the cyclone
left in its wake. But this hurricane Oc-
Cured in a district thickly peopled
and whole towns were destroyed. Its
course was in the form of crescent,
one hundred and fifty miles in length
and half mile in width, beginning in
the centre of the State and ending in
the southeast corner. The number of
the dead is yet but imperfectly known;
exact reports come in slowly; but OF
dead, manned and mutilated there are
many hundreds, if not thousands.
Over three hundred houses are total
ly destroyed, and the loss of property
is estimated at $3,0O0,000. An ap-
peal is made to the benevolent and
public-spirited of other sections and
States to give relief to the desolated
belt of Iowa.
The wind, mans best servant is
also his most terrible master. The
rotary winds that have their origin
and home upon the wide expanse of
the prairie answer to the tornadoes
and cyclones of the tropics. The
phenomena attending them point to
the conjunction of two air currents and
the tornado is the result of their two
forces. Their coming is heralded by
unusual portants in the sky, but no
one can gather from these omens
anything but vague sense OF danger
Where a forest is in the path the trees
are laid low as if moved by a scythe.
Frame houses are blown from their
foundations and brick houses are left a
mass of ruins. Horses suddenly over
taken will have their harness blown
completely off them Chickens and
other fowls are in twinkling render
ed featherless Women and often
men as well are stripped by the vio-
lence of the wind of every particle of
their clothing and left at the mercy of
the flying debris. In more violent
cases the horse as we'll as harness is
carried high into the air, and the
West contains not few Involuntary
eronauts who have survived to re-
late their experience but nearly all
of the many who are taken up in these
fearful whirlwinds are found again, if
found at all, as mangled, lifeless bodies
with clothes gone and usually covered
with black mud.
A remarkable feature of these storms
is their upward current. Roofs are
carried up, and after them the people
and furniture in the houses are shot
upwards as if from the mouth of
tremendous cannon. These are not
highly wrought tales of excited lockers
on, but are facts carefully ascertained
and reported by the Government
Signal Bureau. In this Iowa disaster
one of the present added horrors of
the scene is the dead animals which
the wind caught up only to dash
down again, and whose rotting bodies
now pollute the air. The editor of the
Des Moines Register reports that large
droves of cattle were carried through
the air for thousands of feet and thrown
down dead in heaps. Houses were in
some instances carried a thousand
feet in the air, and the falling missels
were more deadly than a discharge of
artillery.