Thomasville, AL Tornado, Mar 1913

TORNADO WIPES OUT ..... THOMASVILLE

Property Damage Will Run Well Into Millions-Buildings Demolished, Houses Unroofed, Wires Paralyzed and Crops Destroyed.

More than one hundred persons are reported killed and hundreds were injured, some mortally by a storm of tornado intensity which raged over central, western, southern and parts of eastern states yesterday. Property damage will run well into the millions.

Definite advices have been received accounting for at least seventy persons dead with reports from points temporarily cut off from wire communication by the storm adding hourly to the list.

Sixty Dead in Alabama.

Reports from Alabama show the loss of life was heaviest in that state, the number of dead there being already definitely placed at sixty, with additional fatalities reported but not confirmed. Two towns, Thomasville and Lower Peachtree, were practically wiped out.

Accompanying the death lists are estimates of the injured totalling more than 200, with additions coming in at brief intervals.

Coming up out of the southwest Friday morning, just as spring was ushered in the storm swept with startling suddenness diagonally across the country from northern Texas to western Pennsylvania and New York, bisecting the Mississippi valley and moving northeastward across the Ohio into the Great Lake region.

Property Loss Heavy

Shifting winds of great violence accompanied in various sections by snow, sleet and hail, characterized the storm, easily the most destructive of the year and rarely equalled in the extent of its sweep and damage. Buildings toppled before the blow in nearly a dozen states, and death lay all along in its wake.

The property loss was heavy all along the storm's track. Besides demolishing or unroofing buildings and felling trees, the high winds, rain, hail and sleet did serious damage to early crops, according to reports from some of the affected sections. Estimates of damage to property from Indiana and Michigan alone aggregate $2,000,000, about evenly divided between the two states. Early reports of losses ranging from $25,000 to $500,000 or more from sections of the storm region indicated that the total would reach large figures.

The Atlanta Constitution, Atlanta, GA 22 Mar 1913

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Mobile, Ala., March 22......

Reports from Thomasville state that five men were killed near there by the storm. Communication is being restored slowly.

The Atlanta Constitution, Atlanta, GA 23 Mar 1913
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Transcribed by Linda Houston. Thank you, Linda!