TORNADO DESTROYS TOWN

Moundsville, Alabama, Suddenly Removed from the Map.

PATH HALF A MILE WIDE SWEPT.

Many Homes, Hotels and Warehouses Demolished by the Wind's Velocity.

A disastrous tornado swept over Moundville, a town of 300 inhabitants, 15 miles south of Tuscaloosa, Ala., and as a result 37 persons were killed, and more than 100 injured. Every business house, with the exception of a small drug store, was completely destroyed.

The tornado struck the town from the southwest, and mowed a path a quarter of a mile wide through the town.

All but five of those killed were Negroes.

Surgeons were rushed to Moundville from Greensboro and Tuscaloosa, and all possible was done to alleviate the sufferings of the injured. By the force of the storm persons were blown hundreds of feet from their beds in the blackness of night.

Through terror, a father, mother and three children fled from their home to seek refuge, and in their excitement left a 5-year-old boy in bed. He was pulled from beneath some timber and thus far it is impossible to find any other member of the family.

Bedding, carpets and wearing apparel were scattered for a distance of 10 miles through what was a forest, but which is now as clear as though cut by the woodman's axe. Freight cars were torn to splinters, the trucks from them being hurled hundreds of feet from the track.

The depot, the hotel, warehouses, gins, 30 homes and many stores, together with their stocks, were completely destroyed. It is impossible to find even the pillars upon which these structures rested. Bales of cotton stored in warehouses were torn to atoms, the fragments of lint lodging in trees, making it appear as though that section had been visited by a snowstorm.

A young clerk employed by W. P. PHIFER, hearing the terrible roaring of the storm, let himself into a well in the center of the store. He no sooner found his place of safety when the store was completely demolished. He was drawn out uninjured.

The Indiana Democrat Pennsylvania 1904-01-27
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Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler. Thank you, Stu!