The daily Alaskan., 1913-12-10
WILD WIND ANTICS
The Havoc That May Come When
 a Tornado Breaks Loose.
SToRMSaPLAY QUEER FRANKS

O IilUSNh In NSE-tA A"''NA Houses Have Been Carried Bodily Into
 tho Air and Exploded, and Half a
 Building Has Been Swept Away,
 While the Rest Remained Unharmed.
 The weather bureau at Washington has been collecting statistics and facts about cyclones and tOrnadOes for many years, and the experts have succeeded in securing considerable valuable data about the big winds; but after all, the freaks of the storm are the things that give 1t special interest, and if all these were properly classified some remarka ble reading would be furnished. Every visitation of a tornado adds to this val uable storehouse of queer freaks.
 It Is not uncommon for the whirline wind to cut a house in half, demolish ing one side and leaving the other un disturbed. This happened in an Iowa tornado. and the part that was left in tact was so little disturbed that the clock on the mantel continued ticking, as if nothing had happened.
 In the Texas town of Sherman, which was visited by a tornado in 1896. two houses were picked mp and carried into the air where they eX plOded. Every one in them was severe ly injured except a baby, which did not receive so much as a scratch. A man milking a COW iu a shed saw the COW and shed carried up in the air, but he WIS not so much as touched. Not a drop of the milk in his pail was spilled or disturbed.
 In the St. Louis tornado of the same year a carpet in the parlOr of one house was pulled up by the twister and car ried away few hundred yards with out so much as rent being torn in it The tacks had been pulled up as neatly as if extracted by a careful carpet layer.
 In another house the bedclothing and mattress were lifted from the BCd, and the bedstead was left intact A resi- dent was carried through the roof Of another house with the bed and drop ped a quarter of q mile away without Injury. The mattress saved him in the fall, and he picked himself up in a va cant lot to dress without knowing eN actly what had happened 10 him.
 The "twisters" have been known to pull nails out of shingles and then go on to pick uP a chimney bodily and carry 1t through the air. In Kansas one picked up a buggy and landed it in the branches of a tree. At another time it ripped the harness completely off horse and left horse. buggy and man uninjured. In Louisville, in lSGU tornado carried the roof off a house and pulled a child from the mothers arms and carried it safely to another house six blocks away.
 But these are merely among the harmless freaks of the big wind There are others more heartrending. It has dlsmembered human beings, tearing arms and legs from the body, and twisted the hair of women into ropes. In Kansas it drove q piece of scantliug six inches square through the body or q hog. At another time 1t blew in the door Of q farmers house and carried the owner away on the door, to drop him in the branches of a tree, The tornado did not hurt him, but he broke his neck falling frop the tree to the ground.
 No one has succeeded in measuring the full force of a tornado, but 1t iS known to travel at the rate of 2C' miles and more an hour,
 TornadOes are exciting more genera attention than formerly because of th greater number of towns and village located in the tornado belt. Each su. cessive one is more dangerous than tt predecessors because It is apt to fin more human material to destroy. Fol merly 1t might travel half the lengt. of continent without finding anythin' In Its path to destroy except grass trees and occasionally the crops of , solitary farmer. Today, If 1t tO!aoWe, the same route, it might pass over dozen villages and towns.
 The only thing that can pCssibl' break the force of q tornado is a rang of mountains. It may create will havoc among the trees and powder of mountain, but 1t cannot carry tn, mountain itself away. It will uproo giant forest trees, suck the water fror wells and streams, twist and demoIis. iron bridges and carry up houses, bu the mountains are proof against th' mighty force Of the wind.
 Until we know how to control tn tornado or find some means of battling 1t. its menacing danger must always be a source of considerable uneasiness in the great plain sections of the coun try. But, like earthquakes, the tor nado and cyclone do not come every year, and sometimes they defer their visit for a decade or so, for which We
 TV -Tf-h fr