TORNADO RIPS HOMES, KILLS 5 NEAR NEOGA.

Neoga, Ill. (AP)
Stunned residents of a lakeside community began returning to their twisted, battered homes today following a tornado that killed at least five, injured up to 50 and laid waste to scores of trailer homes and cottages.
"I watched it come down here and demolish everything. I saw houses go, people, everything, said CLARK LOWE, 18, of Champaign, who was in a boat on Lake Mattoon when the tornado touched down.
"I'll tell you what it looked like," he said. "When God spread the ocean open. That's what it looked like."
State trucks arrived during the morning to begin cleanup operations, and E. ERIE JONES, state emergency services director, said he doubted that more bodies would be found at the site.
"It really is a possibility, but not likely," he said. "We think we would have heard of people missing by now."
The tornado struck the small east central Illinois community without warning around 1 p.m. Sunday, as a spectacular prairie electrical storm crackled across a midnight-black sky.
The twister demolished dozens of homes on the western side of the lake, then skipped across the water and split buildings asunder on the eastern shore.
Summer cottages were flattened, mobile homes, blown from their pedestals and hurled into the lake. A two-by-four was driven through the wall of a mobile home like a nail and a water ski was found in a cornfield 800 yards from the shore.
Among those returning to the site today was HAROLD KIRBY, 50, of Thomasboro, who picked his way around his 10 by 50 foot trailer home that had been overturned and battered by the storm.
KIRBY had been cooking hamburgers in a nearby shed when the tornado struck, "and I ended up over on the other side of the truck," he said.
"There's my hat," he exclaimed, reaching to pick up an old straw hat in the cornfield.
DELBERT PERRY, 49, of Filo, his wife and friends were away at a race at the Illinois State Fair when the tornado struck and wrecked their small trailer home.
He said he heard about the tornado on the radio coming home and was glad he had gone to the races.
"It's the best money I ever spent," he said.
State troopers and sheriff's deputies fought their way with trucks and ambulances past scores of gapers who clogged the two access roads to the little vacation community. They fould five dead, more than 50 injured, 50 homes destroyed and an eerie silence.
The twister devastated a family on a visit from their home in Fairbury, 50 miles north. CAROLYN McCOLLOH, 36, was killed; her husband STAN, 41, daughter, JILL, 15, and son RANDY, 11, were all taken to the intensive care unit in a Champaign hospital, and another daughter, JOAN, 10, was in surgery.
Authorities identified the others killed as ROSEMARY CORBAN, 50, of Pontiac; JOSEPH T. FITZGERALD, 19, of Chicago; DEWEY A. MANION, 59, of Chicago, and LETA WAYMACK, 40, of Charleston.
"In the path of the tornado, itself, that was nothing left standing," MARK BUSEKRUS, Coles County emergency services coordinator said. "Everything in the path was reduced to rubble. No walls. Nothing."
Tornado-like winds also caused damage further south, near Marion and Herrin.
Some homes and businesses in the area were without electricity today after winds knocked out power late Sunday night.
Residents of Herrin said the winds felled many trees and ripped off tree limbs.
On the DARRYLL KRUMRAY farm south of Marion, winds collapsed a barn and an attached shed and damaged the KRUMRAY house, authorities said.

Southern Illinoisan Carbondale Illinois 1977-08-22

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Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler. Thank you, Stu!