Waco, TX Tornado, May 1953 - Survivor Account

All of downtown Waco was under martial law. Airmen from Connally Air Force Base, Boy Scouts, police and firemen patrolled in pitch dark streets among the rubble several feet deep. Crushed automobiles under the fallen masonry were difficult to identify. Some of the dead were in the vehicles, caught in the 5 p.m. rush period.

Every building in an area roughly 20 blocks square was either destroyed or damaged. Many splintered homes were in the wreckage.

Steel sides of the big Brazos River Bridge were sliced as if with gigantic can openers. All of the span’s wooden portion was ripped away and what traffic there was crawled slowly over a single track across the naked steel.

Ronnie Murphree, 17, was in Torrance’s recreation hall with 25 or 30 other teenagers when the storm struck. “We were all playing pool,” he said.

“Then the lights went out, but nobody paid much attention. We just thought it was a storm. It was raining and hail was beating on the windows. The dust began to come from the ceiling and that’s when I thought something was wrong. I dived under a pool table and almost everybody else did too. Then the whole world seemed to fall in.

“After a while, I pushed away some brick and stuff from around the table and crawled out. I was right near the side door. When I got up on top, I looked around and then I saw this awful, awful mess.”

How many were trapped inside the building and how many of them were alive were moot questions. One was 17-year-old Donald Hansford. He was trapped but still alive and talking to his father, one of the frantic scores tunneling through the debris to reach him.

Most of the debris had landed on the table under which Donald has dived. His legs were caught.

“My ankle’s numb,” he said. “I think I’ve got a broken leg.”

“Don’t go to sleep,” the father said. “I won’t let you go to sleep.”

It was young Hansford who said there were 25 to 30 persons in the wrecked recreation hall. He was a star football player last season at la Vega, Tex., high school.

Big Spring Daily Herald, Big Spring, TX 12 May 1953