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The Devasting Tornado of April 9, 1947
of Woodward, Oklahoma
The Woodward County
Courthouse is lone
survivor of
downtown.
The most deadly tornado to ever strike within the
borders of the state of Oklahoma occurred on
Wednesday, April 9,
1947 in the city of
Woodward. The Woodward tornadic storm began in
the Texas Panhandle during the afternoon of
April 9, 1947, and
produced at least six
tornadoes along a 220 mile path that stretched
from White Deer, TX (northeast of Amarillo) to
St. Leo, KS (west of
Wichita).
The tornado that would strike Woodward began near
Canadian, TX. Moving northeast, it continued
on the ground
continuously for about 100
miles, ending in Woods County, Oklahoma,
west
of Alva. The tornado was massive, up to 1.8 miles wide, and
traveled at forward speeds of about 50 miles
per hour. It first
struck Glazier and Higgins
in the Texas Panhandle, devastating both
towns
and producing at least 69 fatalities in Texas before crossing
into Oklahoma. In Ellis County, Oklahoma, the
tornado did not strike
any towns, passing to
the southeast of Shattuck, Gage, and Fargo.
Even though no towns were struck, nearly 60
farms and ranches were
destroyed and 8 people
were killed with 42 more injured. Moving into
Woodward County, one death was reported near
Tangier.
The violent tornado (F5 on the Fujita Scale) unleashed
its worst destruction on Woodward, striking
the city without warning
at 8:42 pm. Over 100
city blocks on the west and north sides of the
city were destroyed with lesser damage in the
southeast portion of
the town. Confusion and
fires reigned in the aftermath with over
1000
homes and businesses destroyed, at least 107 people killed in
and around Woodward, and nearly 1000
additional injuries. Normal
communications
between Woodward and the outside world were not
restored for some time and there was great
uncertainty as to victim
status. In fact, the
bodies of three children were never identified,
and one child who survived the tornado was
lost and never reunited
with her family. Help
for Woodward came from many places, including
units from as far away as Oklahoma City and
Wichita. Beyond
Woodward, the tornado lost
some intensity, but still destroyed 36
homes
and injured 30 people in Woods County before ending.
In all, at least 116 lives were lost in Oklahoma on
that fateful night. Never before or since has
a tornado been so
costly to human life in the
Sooner State. Because of the Woodward
tornado
and other devastating tornadoes in the late 1940's and early
1950's, and because of new technologies
available after World War
II, the Weather
Bureau (now the National Weather Service) began a
tornado watch and warning program in 1953.
During the last five
decades, the warning
system composed of the National Weather
Service, local civil preparedness agencies,
and the media has
continued to mature and
provide better and better information to
citizens to help them protect themselves from
tornadoes. Because of
the strengths of the
warning system, tornado death tolls in
Oklahoma, and nationwide, have dropped
considerably with each
passing decade and,
hopefully, will continue to decrease."
- Donald W. Burgess, National Severe Storms Laboratory
(NSSL)
WOODWARD
TOLL IS
83
DEAD;
3,000
ARE
LEFT
HOMELESS
1,000
Are on
Injury
List in
Tornado;
Gage Also Counts Three Fatalities;
Property
Damage
Put at $5
Million
By
Ray Parr (Daily
Oklahoman
Staff
Writer)
April 11,
1947 Front
page, cont.
page
2
Woodward, April 10--Once a laughing city of rodeo and
lusty celebrations. Woodward lay crushed
in
sorrow
Thursday
after
the
darkest night
and
day of
its
history.
Eighty-three
of
its
citizens
were
dead,
possibly
1,000
others were
injured, many
critically, and
3,000 were
homless. At
nearby
Gage, three more
persons
were
killed.
Property
damage
here
exceeded $5
million,
Alex
Geismar,
vice
president
of the
Woodward
bank,
estimated.
"It
will take us five
years to rebuild,"
he
said. There
were
no lights,
telephone
service
or
water--even
for the
injured--throughout
the
night of
horror.
In
five
brief
minutes, the
fury
of the
tornado
struck this cruel blow at
Woodward--the
proud
capital of
Oklahoma's
vast
northwest wheat and
cattle kingdom. The
electric clock on the wall of the
telephone
office stood
still Thursday at 18 minutes until 9--an hour
that will forever be
remembered here as one of
stark
tragedy.
Mrs.
Grace Nix, chief
operator, and Mrs.
Bertha
Wiggans, evening
chief operator, were
alone at
the
switchboard
shortly after 8
p.m. when the rural
lines
began
to
flash,
the
first signal of the
trouble that was
brewing. The
operator
at
Shattuck, 35
miles
west of here,
called
in.
"It's
storming
out here," she
said.
"Are you all
right?"
"Yes,
we're all right,"
andswered Mrs.
Nix.
Then
the
operator at
Costos,
southeast
of
Woodward,
called. "There
is
a black cloud
over
Woodward," she
said, "It
looks
terrible."
"I
haven't had
time to
look," Mrs. Nix
replied. "Ten
minutes
later," Mrs. Nix
re-called Thursday,
"every
local number
started
standing on the
board." The
operator
then
called L.
I.
Aurell, wire
chief. "It
looks
like
a storm," he
said.
"Then the
whole board was ablaze
with
lights,"
Mrs. Nix
continued
Thursday.
"Broken
glass, tar paper
from
roofs,
pieces
of
awning began
flying in
the
window. The
switchboard went
completely dead."
A
dazzling flash of
lightning lit up the
city
and then came the
wind--with the roar of
many
express
trains.
"We could
do nothing but
wait,"
Mrs. Nix
said. The
wind
passed on, and
the two
operators
opened the
front door, gazed out at
a scene of devastation.
At the
west
edge of town,
Tom
Hieronymus,
former
assistant
U.S.
Attorney,
and
five
passengers were
driving
toward a
roadside
restaurant.
Heavy clouds
hung
loverhead.
There was
lightning and
thunder. "It
looks
like a
hard rain,"
Hieronymus said.
"Then all
at once
my car
wouldn't go anymore,"
he
recalled
Thursday. "It came
to a complete stop
and
the engine died.
We could feel
something
beating on the
car. I thought
it
was hail. We
sat
there for five
minutes. "I
rolled
down the glass
and
looked out to
see
if
there was any
damage. Not a
house was standing, as far
as I
could see.
Then people came running
from
everywhere--bleeding,
covered with mud, many
with hardly any clothes
on--all crying for
help. It was
awful."
At the
Armstrong funeral home,
Franklin Blecher was
preparing to retire when
the storm
struck.
Window
screens were
whipped
off.
Two huge
trees
in
the front
yard
smashed to
the
ground. The roof
was
damaged.
"Two
minutes after the
wind
quieted,
there was a
knocking at the front
door," he said. "A
car had overturned in
the next block and
two persons were
hurt. We
started
after
them and
have
been
going
ever since."
Dead Left, Injured Taken
"We could not
pick up the dead. There were too many
injured." The dead
could not be moved
until
after midnight.
Late
Thursday
afternoon, the
ambulances were still
bringing
in the
injured--and
the
dead. At the
Woodward theater,
300
persons sat watching
"Rage in
Heaven."
At
the
Terry theater,
about 200 were
enjoying
"Devil on
Wheels."
At
the Woodward theater a
skylight
blew off,
the
front
awning came
tumbling
down.
Some of the
patrons
started for
the
door,
but most sat
quietly. Nobody
went outside until
the
storm had spent
itself,
Ben Terry,
manager,
said. At the
other
theater, a front window was
smashed, but
no
one realized
what
was
happening. At the
Elks club, 10 men sat
playing cards in an
upstairs room of a
two-story brick
building.
"Then
the building began
to
shake and
quiver," Clark
Lawrence,
publisher,
recounted. There
was a rush toward the
door, but M. B.
Wyatt, a
husky
240-pounder,
blocked the
way.
"Nobody
is going to
open
this door,"
he
shouted. Channing
Guffey,
editor of
the
Woodward Press, sat
in
an upstairs apartment
with his wife.
"She had been watching
the clouds and was
nervous," he
said.
"There
was a
strong
wind from
the
south.
It suddenly
shifted
to
the
east. That was the
sign. We
ran
downstairs, and the
wind
had whipped back to
the
southwest.
Bricks Fall Unheard
"We tried to get in
the basement, but the door was
padlocked. We threw ourselves
on the
ground and
waited. The front of the house caved
in. The roof went
off over our
heads." The
roof,
tons of
brick,
concrete
and
debris were dumped within 20 feet of the
couple. "We didn't
hear a thing
falling,"
he said. "The
noise of the
wind
was
too loud."
At
the telephone
office,
Aurrell, whose
home was
blown away, and
Carl
Brown, a
construction
foreman, who was in the
telephone building,
started to trace the
broken wires.
At
the south edge of
town
they made a
connection
and
flashed first word
of the disaster to
Enid
where T. J. Murphy,
district supervisor,
was
working on the
switchboard because of
the
strike. Other
construction workers
began reporting for
duty. Eight
striking operators
returned
to their
posts.
Temporary
service was
resumed about 8 a.m.
Thursday.
As the
fierce
wind died, dazed
survivors crawled
from
the
wreckage of
homes
in
pitch
darkness
and began the
grim search for
loved
ones.
Then Rain, Fire by Lightning
But the elements
had one
final
blow.
Hard,
driving
rain
fell for 30
minutes in
cloudburst
proportions
to add to the
misery. Fire,
apparently
started
by
lightning
broke out in the
northeast section,
razing the
Big 7
Electric
Co., the
Big 7
hotel,
the Armour
creamery and the
Rainey-Davis
wholesale
firm. As
electric
pumps failed,
the
water
supply was
quickly
exhausted.
Volunteer
workers
began
bringing
in
the
injured.
The
Woodward
hospital
was
quickly
filled
to
overflowing.
The
emergency hospital
in
the Baptist
church
was
filled
next.
Guest in the
62-room
Baker hotel were
moved out to make
room
for
injured.
Temporary hospitals also
were set up in the
Chiristian and Methodist
churches.
Mooreland Filled Next
The Mooreland community
hospital,
11
miles
east of
Woodward,
was
jammed to capacity
within
a
few
hours.
Still
the stream
of
injured rolled
on. Many
were
whisked out
of town
to
communities
throughout
western
Oklahoma. Doctors
and
nurses from Oklahoma
City, Wichita and
all
over western
Oklahoma
came by air and
automobile and went
quietly to work,
without
formality of
introductions. Red
Cross
and Salvation
army
workers
arrived to bolster the volunteers of
Woodward.
Army DC
4's began evacuation
of
injured to Oklahoma
City. A
special
car
of
wounded was
sent
by train to
Alva. Sixty
highway patrolment,
police
officers from
Oklahoma
City, and
sheriffs and
deputies from
surrounding communities
toiled
to bring
order out
of
chaos.
Emergency
generators were rushed
to the scene by the
Oklahoma City Fire
department and the Oklahoma
Gas and
Electric
Co. Fifty telephone
company
supervisors had
arrived
by
early
morning.
Volunteer crews began a
block
by
block search
for the
dead and
injured.
The
Cnenoweth and
Armstrong
funeral
homesfell
far behind in
the task of
caring for the
dead. Scores
of
embalmers from other
cities came to
aid.
In the
Armstrong
home, the body
of a small child lay
on
the
floor, clutching
a
muddy rag dall in his
arms. The dead
filled every room
and
the hallways.
Many
had been
crushed
and
mutilated.
Broken
survivors
filed
through
the two homes in
search of the
missing--remained to
identify
the dead.
"Do you
have an
unidentified
small
child?" sobbed one
father. The
attendant pulled
back
a
sheet. The
night-long search had
ended. A son found
the body of his father there. "Now
if
I
can only find my
mother," he said, as he
turned away
crying.
Water was
hauled in by
truck
from
Seiling and
Mooreland. The
highway department moved
in two tank cars of water from Mooreland
and
also
brought
heavy
equipment
for moving the debris.
Mayor
R. A. Basch
predicted
water service would be
restored Thursday
night.
Relief
agencies
set up
3,000
cots and blankets in
churches and
community
buildings for
the
homeless. The
fourth
army
started 3,000
tents
enroute from Fort
Worth,
Paul Reed, public
safety commisioner,
called a meeting of all
officials and peace
officers Thursday
night
to organize
the
overall
effort.
Looting Stamped Out
Following the conference,
Reed announced that
sections
where
houses had
been
demolished and
areas
containing damaged
buildings where plate glass
fronts had been
knocked out had been
declared
restricted. Rex
Hawks, head of
the state
bureau of
criminal
investigation, said a few cases of
looting had been
reported Thursday
morning but
had been
stamped
out
without
sesrious
loss.
Reinforcing other
officers
Thursday
night
was the
45th signal company of
the
national guard from
Alva. The
guardsmen
armed with
carbines were
doing
sentry
duty,
and all
persons
moving in the
damaged
areas were
rquired to
have passes
from
the highway patrol
office.
Blood Plasma Flown In
The state health
department, sent blood plasma in large
quantities by airplane.
Two sanitary
engineers
from the health department and Dr. Grady F.
Mathews, state health
commissioner, arrived to
help. The
department also sent
mobile
X-Ray and
hospital units. At the
state
capitol, Gov.
Turner and
his aids
devoted most of the day to
the
disaster. At community center, Mrs.
Walter V. Bowman
worked
throughout the
day,
compiling two lists--one
was the dead,
the
other
was the
missing. The list of the missing became
smaller during the day
as the names of the
dead
grew longer.
Relatives Seek Families
A tear-stained group
huddled around the two lists, hoping and
praying. Relatives
came in from as far
as
Kansas and Texas, seeking word. An aged
farmed from Spearman,
Texas, walked the
littered streets,
stopping
all who
passed. "I
have two daughters here," he said,
"I
went
out
to their house,
but
it wasn't there.
Somebody must have
heard
something.
They
were well
known."
Mobile
canteens
of the
Red
Cross served coffee and sandwiches
in front of
civic
center. Inside,
hundreds of
articles of
clothing
were
sorted and
distributed
as those who
were
not hurt by the storm
brought in their
donations.
Clothing Appeal Issued
Adj. Alfred C. Parker,
of the Lawton
Salvation Army
post,
who
arrived
at the scene
Wednesday night, made an
appeal
for clothing,
especially children's
clothing
and
shoes. "We put
naked children to bed in
the Baker
hotel to keep
them warm," he
said.
Parker said
he took a
family of seven out of a
cave where they had huddled all night in
terror. The father
was critically
injured. The
mother
had only one shoe
and
her night
clothes. The tornado struck
with
savage,
slicing
strokes, as well as
leveling power.
Trees
were chopped off
cleanly
as if by a
giant
mower. All
the bark
was
pealed
cleanly off
many of the standing
trunks. The
storm
came in from
the
southwest and moved in a
diagonal line across
town,
abating somewhat
in the
northeast
section. It was
estimated
100 blocks
were
leveled. At
the
west edge of town, a
residential
area
extneing for a mile
north and
south and
a
half-mile
wide was
wiped
out.
Some
blocks showed no sign of a
house.
Katy Freight Depot Leveled
Other blocks were
a mangled mass of crumpled automobiles,
lumber, bricks and
debris. Twisted
automobiles--tumbled end
over end into farm
fields and
upside-down
against
buildings--rested in
grotesque
patterns.
One car
ended
deep-buried in a
grove of tangled,
uprooted trees, at
least
50 yards from the
highway. Another
was piled high with
bricks that made a
saucer out of its steel
top. The
Katy
fright depot was
demolished, only
portions of
two walls
remaining. The
passenger station also
was heavily
damaged. Here and
there a
house stood
among the
rubble,
virtually
undamaged, and
some owners were busy repairing
roofs
Thursday.
Woodward's largest
nightclub
simply
disappeared. An
automobile lay on
its
back covered with planks
at what had
been
the
rear door of
the club. The owner of a
demolished honky tonk
was metodically digging
out and stacking cases
of beer, which
apparently came through
without damage. In one yard piecese of
furniture stood, also
apparently
unscratched. But there was no
house. The
walls and roff of a lumber
yard was gone, but
the lumber remained
neatly stacked. Part
of the courthouse roof was sheared off,
and
bricks of the wall
were torn loose. No glass remained in
the windows. Not a building in the
business district escaped
damage.
Virtually
all windows were smashed, and broken glass
swung dangerously in the wind. Many
roofs were gone. A
cold, biting wind
whipped through the streets all day Thursday,
as
dark clouds continued to boil
overhead.
In the community
building, the homeless
huddles in pitiful groups, staring blankly
into space. Mrs.
Ned Anderson,
white-haired widow of a
furniture dealer has
lived in Woodward since 1916, eyed the
threatening clouds and
voiced the unspoken
fear of all. "The
clouds late yesterday
looked just like that," she said. "I
hope and pray it doesn't
storm again." "
lost everything and
everybody I had in the
world," a woman sobbed.
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