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“For an hour before the storm struck with lightning-like swiftness, a desultory thundershower had played about the western horizon. There were jagged flashes of lightning, almost incessant the continuous low rumble of thunder, interspersed with an ominous crackling and a gathering darkness.

“A tense silence, which made people’s ears ring, and a sense of oppression heralded the coming of the tornado. There was a dull drumming sound as of innumerable wings being flapped high in the air, and the swirl of black dust about the sky. Then a spiral of loosely woven clouds headed downward, an inky blackness in its wake, and the twister began its devastation.”

Such was one eyewitness’ description of what happened one noon last week when a low-pressure area formed in the sultry atmosphere over eastern Missouri, creating a Cave of the Winds, and loosing upon a residential section of St. Louis its worst tornado since 1896.

It lasted only five minutes. But in that time, the swordlike blast, whistling 90 miles per hour, laid waste six thickly populated square miles. School roofs flew. A home for crippled children and a whole street of modest dwellings were laid open like dolls’ houses, the walls being sucked off outwards by the tornadic vacuum. Steeples crashed, autos slid, trees swept by, scantlings whizzed, people who failed to lie prone were knocked so and dragged along.

Revised estimates of the death and damage:

86 dead*

1,152 injured badly enough to be hospitalized

$100,000,000 destroyed

250 city blocks to be rebuilt

By order of President Coolidge, at the request of Missouri Governor Samuel A. Baker, relief work went forward speedily under Major General William Lassiter of the Sixth Army Corps Area (Chicago).

* In 1896, 13 persons were killed in the St. Louis tornado, 1152 injured badly enough to be hospitalized, $100,000,000 destroyed. 250 city blocks to be rebuilt.

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