AN ELECTRIC STORM.

Death and Destruction Visit a Pennsylvania Town.

A Number of Persons Instantly Killed by Lightning.

An electric storm, more violent and destructive than has been seen in the Lackawanna Valley for more than a quarter of a century, swept over Scranton, Penn., between 2 and 3 o'clock the other afternoon. There were frightful flashes of lightning and simultaneous crashes of thunder for half an hour, and a perfect gale of wind, hailstones as large as thimbles, and an unprecedented rainfall were other features of the great storm. It was formed in the open and comparatively level country west of Bald Mount, and it swept down into the Lackawanna valley from the northwest. As it struck the notch through which Leggatt's Creek runs it became compressed and concentrated, and when it got into the valley, a short distance northwest of the Providence section of Scranton, it spread out and carried terror, death and destruction before it.
The lightning killed a little girl in a doorway, and slightly damaged three buildings. A small ball of fire entering the open door of a store on Main avenue, burned off the telephone wire in the rear of the building, but did no other damage.
Before and rain had fallen JOHN ARMSTRONG, aged 21, a Delaware, Lackawanna and Western brakeman, stood on top of a freight car opposite the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company's store on Lackawanna avenue, at a few yards from the company's blast furnaces. A blinding flash and a terrific peal of thunder at the same instant, that made the man in the store and around the furnaces quail, killed ARMSTRONG. The bolt hit him squarely on top of the head, came out under the chin, ripped and tore his clothing, shattered his boots, and left him dead on top of the car. A man underneath the car was stunned, and the men if the furnaces were disagreeably affected, but the car was not damaged. In the store across the street a young man walked up to the telephone just as the flash came, and a streak of fire darted out of the crackling instrument and singed one side of his whiskers.
BARTHOLOMEW REAGAN, aged 19, was driving a team on Shanty Hill in the midst of the blinding storm. A bolt of lightning struck him on the breast and left a purple leaf-shaped spot there, and then passed down his right side and leg, rending his clothing and tearing his shoe off. He was killed instantly. Both of the horses were felled to the ground by the bolt. The off one was killed, and the shoes were torn from the hind feet of the near one.
ROBERT DYRONE, a farm hand in the employ of A. J. STONE, about one mile from Clark's Green was working in a field when the storm came up. He ran under a large maple tree when it began to rain. The tree was struck by lightning and split in two and DYRONE was instantly killed. People in a house near by saw the bolt descend. DYRONE was 29 years old.
Lightning also struck the German Presbyterian Church spire on Hickory street and shattered it. A pile of pig-iron in the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company's yard was tumbled about by another bolt, and several trees on the mountain south of the city were shivered. Down in the valley, where the Edison Incandescent Light Company has its generating works, electricity was thick during the storm. It rushed into the building on some of the wires and demagnetized the dynamos, and the consequence was that the lights on one of the circuits did not shine that night.
After it had rained and hailed for fifteen or twenty minutes, the wind suddenly whirled from the northwest to the southeast, and the terrifying gale and flood that followed led people to believe that two storms had come together from opposite directions. The wind drove the torrents of water through window casings that had never leaked before, and the air was so full of water that seeing for more than quarter of a block was an impossibility. Hen-coops, outhouses and rubbish of all kinds floated down toward the Lackawanna from the heights toward Dunmore, and a great deal of damage was done to cellars, roads, and sidewalks by the flood. The rooms in the upper part of town were filled and clogged with sand and gravel, causing them to overflow, and a big volume of water came into the Fairlawn mines. After the storm myriads of very small toads covered the country in its track.

The Cranbury Press New Jersey 1888-07-13
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Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler. Thank you, Stu!