KILLER TORNADOES HIT STATE, AT LEAST 10 DIE AT OUTING.

SEARCH CONTINUES IN STORM DEBRIS.

They are still looking for the dead and injured in the Outing area today after tornadoes yesterday afternoon slashed a vicious path that left at least 10 dead and scores injured in their wake.
Hardest hit was the Rosevelt lake area just north of Outing.
The twister smashed to kindling, the SIMMONS resort, killing two vacationers and injuring 12.
Just across the lake it ripped into three cabins at the Bethany Bible camp, apparently killing seven. At noon today five of the bodies had been recovered and two were still missing.
At the Roosevelt Narrows just southwest of the SIMMONS resort, the twister upended a boat with two fishermen and both of them drowned.
To the northeast, the whirling funnel completely devastated a cabin on remote Reservoir lake, killing a two-year-old girl who was picked up and hurled into the lake some 20 feet from shore. Her body was recovered this morning by skindivers of the elite Minnesota Para-Rescue team. They found her in about four feet of water.
The mother of the little girl and her two young sisters and a brother were taken to safety late last night after a heroic march through the tangled woods by the children's grandmother and then a Herculean wood cutting task by a group of volunteers, conservation workers and highway patrolmen.
Forces of the Cass County sheriff's office, the Civil Air Patrol, Civil Defense, the National Guard, highway patrol, conservation department workers, the Para-Rescue team, the Red Cross the Hennepin County Sheriff's office rescue unit were all pooling efforts today to find out if there were more dead and injured in the remote areas.
The Hennepin county sheriff's office sent a helicopter and a full rescue team into the area. The helicopter was being used to spot areas where cabins and houses had been hit and then rescue units headed into the area any way they could get there -- by CAP seaplane, boat, jeep, trucks and in many cases, on foot.
The operation is being directed by Sheriff BILL MERRILL of Cass county. The command headquarters has been set up at the Outing Village hall.
Volunteer women from the area and Salvation Army workers from as far away as Duluth were keeping up a steady flow of coffee, sandwiches and doughnuts to weary officials and volunteers.
Civil Defense officials early this morning began issuing passes for qualified persons to be in the area.
The National Guard was called out last night and 60 Guardsmen today are combining search efforts with guard duty at homes and resorts to prevent looting.
By late forenoon the search efforts of the Para-Rescue team were being concentrated at the Bethany Bible camp.
Some 28 persons were staying in three cabins at this spot.
The twister completely destroyed all three of them. One of the cabins was literally picked up and dumped into the lake along with its occupants.
The bodies of two of these persons had not yet been recovered at noon today.
Four were recovered late yesterday and a fifth was recovered shortly after 8 a.m. by a skindiver.
One of the survivors was a shaken KEN DUGAN of Los Angeles, Calif. Two members of the DUGAN family were killed and six were injured.
"We lost seven," he said to a reporter. "I'm shaken. I don't know ..."
A heroic walk through the storm-tossed night and a Herculean effort by volunteers, highway patrol and Conservation department workers freed an injured mother and three of her four children. The fourth was two-year-old SUSAN MARKO who was picked up by the twister and hurled into Reservoir lake.
MRS. ELEANOR MARKO and the children were staying in a cabin owned by MRS. ORVIL BUSBEY, MRS. MARKO'S mother. MRS. BUSBEY said she was in another area picking berries and that the twister missed her.
MRS. MARKO told officers that she first took shelter in a camper trailer and then went into the cabin. The twister missed the camper, but completely demolished the cabin. MRS. MARKO suffered a broken arm, a dislocated arm and numerous cuts and bruises. The three surviving children suffered numerous cuts and bruises and were in a state of shock.
When MRS. BUSBEY returned to the cabin she found the place devastated and her daughter and family injured. The cabin is far from the main traveled road, and the trail, several miles in length, leading to it was blocked with downed trees.
MRS. BUSBEY set out on foot for help, hiking through the woods in an effort to find a shortcut. She came to a place owned by MR. and MRS. HANK PIKUS and a call was put into the game warden at Outing.
He in turn notified highway patrol dispatcher ROD ROMINE here and rescue workers were rushed to the area.
A crew with chain saws savagely attacked downed trees and branches to clear a path.
Shortly before midnight they had fought their way to the area, but still couldn't get a vehicle in. DANNY MARKO, 9 and PAMELA, 5, were carried out of the area in the arms of the rescue workers while the rest of the crew continued a feverish attack on the tree trunks and limbs.
Around 1 a.m. a vehicle made it through and MRS. MARKO and a three-year-old child were taken out and rushed to the Crosby ambulance. That child was not seriously hurt.
MRS. MARKO and her children were from Minneapolis.
At the SIMMONS resort on Roosevelt lake, the twister wiped out the homes of MR. and MRS. GEORGE ZIEHR, owners, and demolished all but one of their 10 cabins.
The two persons killed were in cabins close to the lake shore. The tornado literally wiped them from their foundations and slammed what remained of them against a hillside.
"How anyone could come out of either of those cabins alive is more than I know," said ZIEHR, "but several of them came walking out."
ZIEHR said he had his first warning of the coming tornado when a forest ranger at Backus called to say that a funnel had been sighted.
"I went to all of the cabins," he said, "and warned them. Then I went back up to the house. I just got to the top of the hill when it came. I called for my wife and daughter to go to the basement."
"Just as I started down the stairs, the house went off above me. There was a loud roar and there was so much dirt in the air that I couldn't see."
ZIEHR and his family escaped injury.
ZIEHR came out of the basement of his home after the twister passed and looked across the way to his uncle's place.
"I saw my uncle (FLOYD SIMMONS) walking around on the foundation where his house had been" he said, "buit I couldn't see my aunt. I ran over there and saw her standing in the basement, looking up. The house was gone."
SIMMONS and his wife had operated the resort for 23 years and Ziehr had just purchased it this spring.
"I had reservations through Labor Day," he said, "and was filled up through July of next year."
The first concern after the storm passed was for the injured. Twelve of the approximately 50 guests staying in the 10 SIMMONS cabins were taken to the hospital for treatment.
Staying at the restort was a fire chief from Camanche, Iowa. Both he and ZIEHR have been trained in Red Cross first aid.
"We tore loose what was left of the cabins to make litters for the injured," ZIEHR said, "and then we commandeered every station wagon we could find."
ZIEHR said that volunteers flocked in to help immediately. "We had 50 people helping within minutes," he said.
Before many more minutes had passed, area resort owners were arriving on the scene to offer their facilities for the now homeless vacationers.
One of the guests at the SIMMONS resort stood in the doorway of his cabin and watched the twister hit while his family sought shelter beneath a bed.
He was DALE HEINZER, Des Moines, Iowa. "I saw the water being picked up off the lake in sheets," HEINZER said, "and I called for the family to get under the bed."
HEINZER'S wife is seven months pregnant, however, and she couldn't make it beneath the bed.
"All of a sudden there was a whistling and a screaming sound," HEINZER said. "I watched a canoe on the lake being picked up and thrown onto the beach. The trees were bending over to the ground."
A tree fell on the roof of the cabin, but the building was about the only one that escaped serious damage at the resort.
"You know," he said solemnly, "when it was all over it looked like a battlefield, only not a shot had been fired."
HEINZER'S wife was taken to the Crosby hospital for observationi while he and the rest of his family headed for relatives in Grand Rapids.
ORVILLE MORTON of Leavitt lake told a story of terror when the tornado hit his home and completely demolished it while seven people huddled inside.
Visiting at the MORTON home were MR. and MRS. JAMES DIXON and their five children from Palisade.
MORTON said he saw the twister coming and pushed his wife, a wheelchair victim, into a bedroom. About that time the storm struck.
"The windows started blowing in," MORTON said, and I pushed my wife into the bedroom and that was the last I touched her. "When it hit I saw one of DIXON'S children go flying past and I reached out and grabbed her. When it was over I couldn't find my wife, but I was still holding onto the little girl."
MRS. MORTON was found still in her wheelchair and has been hospitalized in Crosby, but isn't seriously injured.
MORTON said that his house was completely destroyed.
"The biggest piece I could find was one small board," he said. "The rest is scattered over half a mile."
Two large trees crashed down on his car, damaging it heavily.
The ROBERT TUBBS family of Wilmington, Delaware, were counting their blessings last night. They were staying in a cabin on Leavitt lake when they saw the twister coming.
MR. and MRS. TUBBS and their three children crawled beneath the cabin to wait out the storm. Though the area around them was devastated, the cabin was not seriously damaged.
"Even our car was missed by the falling trees," MRS. TUBBS said. However, it was about 1 a.m. before they were able to make their way out. Again, a group of volunteers with chain saws cleared the road leading to the lake.
Lending his services in an effort to aid the communications effort was KENNETH McGEE, Backus. McGEE is a businessman who travels all over the United States and has a telephone in his car.
He said he heard about the tornado while stopping at the Backus post office. He said he called the sheriff's office to find out what had happened and was told that it had hit near Backus and that telephone lines were down.
The Cass county sheriff's office asked him to drive into the area and report what he saw. McGEE did and when he finished there headed over to Outing to offer his telephone services there.

DEATH LIST
At Outing:
MRS. EVELYN CARLSON, 6820 Auto Club Rd., Bloomington, Minn.
JENS GOTTLIEB, about 80, 2727 NE. Lincoln St., Minneapolis.
MRS. RAE J. KNIGHTON, about 40, 900 Meadow Lake Rd. W., New Hope, Minn.
The Rev. ARTHUR S. OLSON, 7021 Augsburgh Ave., Richfield, Minn.
MRS. ARTHUR S. OLSON, wife of the REV. OLSON.
REBECCA ANN DUGAN, 6820 Auto Club Rd., Bloomington.
MRS. EDITH K. DUGAN, 6820 Auto Club Rd., Bloomington.
HARRY LONG, 1020 Stryker, Ave., St. Paul.
MRS. HARRY LONG, wife of HARRY LONG.
SUSAN MARKO, 2 years old, St. Louis Park, Minn.
At Aurora:
MRS. DENNIS HIETALA, 30, 2522 Hagberg St., Duluth.
MRS. ARTHUR HIETALA, 50, rural Aurora, Minn.

LIST OF INJURED.
Forty-one persons were treated at the Cuyuna Range District hospital in Crosby. Still there this morning are 25 of the injured, two in poor condition and the remainder in fair condition, according to hospital officials.
In poor condition are MRS. WALLACE MARSH, 64, of Allison, Iowa, and MRS. ELEANOR MARKO, St. Louis Park.
In fair condition at the Cuyuna Range District hospital are:
Six members of the FRANK DUGAN family of Bloomington -- MRS. PRISCILLA DUGAN, 33; RONALD and TERRY, 17; DIANE, 20; SHANE, 7; PAT. Treated and released were DICK DUGAN, 33; SUE, 17.
DALE CARLSON, 17, Bloomington.
ALVIN REYNOLDS, Austin.
JILL SULLIVAN, 19; PATRICK SULLIVAN, 22, Camanche, Iowa. Treated and released was LISA SULLIVAN, 4 1/2.
MILO MIELKE, Robbinsdale; and MRS. LaVINA MIELKE, 61.
WALLACE MARSH, Allison, Iowa.
MRS. ORVILLE MORTON, 59, St. Paul.
DANIEL, PAMELA and JEAN MARKO, St. Louis Park.
MRS. CAROL BATEY, 34, Clinton, Iowa. Treated and released were FRANK BATEY, 32; RUSSELL, 11; MELISSA, 10; MELINDA, 8.
MRS. HAROLD BROKKE, 42, Minneapolis.
HENRY CARR, 46; TIM CARR, 10, St. Paul.
MRS. ARVILA TYLER, Camanche, Iowa. Treated and released were B. J. TYLER, 35; JANE, 17; REBECCA, 8.
ROBERT STEINER, 47, St. Paul.
Treated and released from the Cuyuna Range hospital in addition to those named were:
PATTY HUNT, 12, Burnsville.
JOHN BORRIS, 47, Minneapolis; MRS. BORRIS, 46; DEBORAH, 10; NANCY, 9.
MRS. JULIE GOTTLIEB, 81, Minnespolis.
Three of the injured in the Backus area were taken to St. Joseph's hospital in Brainerd. KATHY CHALICH, 17, was tranferred to the University hospital in Minneapolis with back injuries. Her sister, BARBARA, 18, and MARK HOLDEN, 18, are both in good condition, officials here report.
Others injured in the Backus area, but not hospitalized, were MRS. LLOYD GRUNDSTON, MRS. VERNON BARTLETT and her son, MARK.

The Brainerd Daily Dispatch Minnesota 1969-08-07
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Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler. Thank you, Stu!