Spinning Doom

People who live in the belt of land between the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes have one uneasy claim to distinction: they are more apt to be killed by tornadoes than residents of any other area on the face of the globe. The sky over their farms and cities is one of nature's battlegrounds: great masses of cold, dry air from the northwest are eternally colliding with bodies of warm, wet air from the tropics. These monstrous collisions--particularly from March through June--produce a fearful progeny of funnelshaped "twisters." Bulldozed Lane. Tornadoes spring into life suddenly, die quickly, and more often than not damage nothing but haystacks and trees. Many are so high that they do not touch the earth. It is impossible to predict where the narrow path of the most damaging will run, and the citizenry of "Tornado Alley" would spend days in their cellars if they took cover at all warnings. As a result, many a resident of San Angelo (pop. 52,000), Texas was totally unprepared one day last week when doom spun down from the sky.

Tornado weather had been moving slowly through the Midwest for days, hatching 16 twisters in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Arkansas. During the morning, tornadoes scored near-misses on Ranger and Wichita Falls. The "tar-colored" whirlwind that hit San Angelo formed close to town, and advanced with frightening speed. At Lakeview school, children had only enough warning to file out from classrooms into the halls before the windows crashed in and the roof flew off. The tornado bulldozed a lane of destruction five blocks wide and a mile long before it died. Three hundred houses were ruined. Scores were buried alive in the debris, and 72 had to be hospitalized after they were dug out. Ten people were killed.

Absolute Silence. But this was only the tinkling prelude to the rumble of destruction in Waco (pop. 84,000), which was hit by another, fiercer tornado only two hours later. The sky turned black over Waco before the twister struck, and heavy rain drummed on roofs and streets. Waco sensed no danger until the howling vortex of the storm was on it. The tornado drove through the city southwest to northeast. It tore a path five blocks wide and five miles long; it ripped up trees, tore off roofs, smashed windows, flattened houses. In the business district it knocked down brick buildings, buried automobiles and screaming humans under tons of masonry.

The drenching rainstorm went on for days afterward, but day & night the people of Waco labored in the rubble to find the living and the dead. In the business district a loudspeaker system was rigged. Occasionally it called for absolute silence : the power tools, tractors and cranes were stopped, and the grimy rescuers stood stock-still -- listening for the thin sound of human voices under the piles of wreckage. At week's end, the crippled city totted up the toll taken by the storm. Known dead: 113; injured: 500. Cost: $50 million.

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