Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-07-27
WITH0UT4 WARNING.
Continued from First Page.

| DcSu gfasp6u IN tnc spiIelul ndHuS Oi U d6
mon, which crumbied it into fragments
The beautiful windows were torn as though
they were paper screens. Having topple(
over the steeple and demolished the win
dows, the roof was next attacked. A sec
tion of it and the entire rear end were tori
out and wasted into rubbish. The wreck!
on Springfield street were in many case:
| complete. Ten buildings were actually
tumbled in fragments into the cellar, ye
there are people alive and comparatively
uninjured tonight who were carried dow1
| with the falling timbers.
The wind played with many of the build.
ings as cat might play with q mouse
Several we're turned upon their foundation
until the front doors were where the back
doors ought to have been. The iron bridge
of the Boston and Maine Railroad, over
Salem street, was warped and twisted as
though its iron girders were made of thin
wire. One house was blown over to the
east, and while the leeward side was all
| jammed together the windward front was
lifted fully aloft in the air. When the
owner reached the place fire was beginning
to blaze among the ruins. He found his
way among the timbers to the sitting room,
and there on the floor under the piano he
found his wife under pile of brick weigh
ing fully 1000 pounds on top of the piano.
At one end of the instrument was a big
| stick of timber, at the other was all the
flooring of the room above, but the piano
legs were big and strong SO they held up un-
| der all the pressure, so his wife was rescued
alive and we'll. Mrs. Mary Pepperer, who
lived at No. 4 Springfield street. was trying
to shut door when the cyclone came along.
| She was picked up and flung into the yard,
receiving severe internal injuries. Her son
was lifted 10 feet in the air, and he, too, fell
in the back yard.
The work of rescuing the living and re-
moving the bodies of the dead was COM
menced at once by the police, fremen and
volunteers. Mary Lyons was found crushed
beneath heavy timbers at No. 8, Emmett
street. She was dead. Mamie O'ConneIl,
No. 10 Springfield street, with her neck
broken and badly mangled. Mrs. Jeremiah
O'Counell. her mother, was found crused to
death at the same place.
Helen Cutler, IL years old, was standing
on the Salem street bridge when the storm
swept over il. She was blown into the street
below, and died from concussion of the brain.
The body of Mrs. John Collins was found in
the ruins of her home on Portland street.
The liieless arms OF the mother was holding
tightly the dead body of her 4year-old
child. Julia Betty, 10 years old, was also
found dead in the ruins on Portland street.
CARRIED THREE HUNDRED YARDS.
Michael Higgins, the switch tender at
South Lawrence, sits on little observatory
near the track. 1t is tall and narrow.
When the storm struck it he was handling
the brakes to switch off a freight train. The
house in which he sat was taken up and
carried some 800 yards. When it fell it was
a mass of kindling wood. Higgins was
picked up dead, his neck being broken.
Blersa Haffner displayed great heroism
in rescuing six little children from a house
which was tumbling. Although suffering
severely from sprained ankle she sought
out the children, jumped from the second
story window to the ground and then caught
the children as they jumped.
Mr. C. d. Mody, of Whitehall, N. Y,
was an eye witness of the catastrophe,
and he also assisted in the
work of rescue. He gave this graphic
story of the storm: "I thought the end of
the world had come. One sees such a
whiriwind but once in a lifetime. ANY
words can express utterly fail to describe
the terrible scene. L never imagined that
tornadoes visited this portion of the country,
and my surprise was as great as my fright.
There was terrible fall of rain, which be-
gan at 9:05 o'clock. The water came down
in heavy sheets, accompanied by cIaps of
thunder. Suddenly there wss more severe
conclusion than previously, then
THROUGH THE DARKNESS
could see boards, branches and debris
generally flying in the air. Next door to
the Office where was there is a machine
shop. and the men employed there rushed
frantically for the doors, but their egress
was difficult, for every step outside meant
danger to life and limb. We all left the
dangerous place and hurried to the house of
NJ. II. Cutler, general foreman of the car
shops here, which we could see in the dark
ness had been blown over. His wife and two
of his daughters were in the houses and an
other daughter was just returning from an
errand over the Salem street bridge when
the terrible thunder clap came.
"The three first mentioned were rescued
from the fallen walls without any serious
injury beyond number of severe brui ises
and cuts, but the young woman crossing the
bridge was quite badly hurt, it is feared, in
ternally. Near that place were SIX or eight
houses and in less time than it takes for me
to tell they were demolished the roofs of
some of them being torn off first, when
others were toppled from their foundations.
Most of the buildings were on the left,
but everything was included in
the general wreck and disaster.
Some of the houses were thrown clear into
the streets blocking the theroughfare
entirely. From Mrs Cutters house I went
down Salem street and assisted the work of
the rescuers as much as I could. From un-
der one roof 1 saw five persons taken. None
of them were dead, but all were severely in
jured and mangled terribly. One of them,
q 9-year-old boy, had his arm broken in five
places. and in his terror and agony shouted
pathetically,
MAMA, MAMA
while she, almost as badly injured, was on
her knees in the street thanking God with
uplifted hands that her little family was no
worse of. From another house woman
was brought out almost naked. Heavy
timbers had her prisoner, and in her strug-
giles to free herself from what seemed an
awful death, she had torn almost all her
clothing from her body. There were about
20 men at work at her house before she was
rescued. With her long gray hairs stream
ing down her back, this old lady-she was
almost 60 years old-was carried into an
opposite house, which had been almost COM
pieteiy wrecked. with blood almost pouring
from the wounds in her body. Two of her
teeth hung by shreads from her torn and
bloody mouth.