Page 16
University Daily Kansan Tuesday, May 21, 1957
36 Die As Tornado Strikes Kansas City Area
Eyewitness
(Continued from Page 1.)
a plaster rust, which settled everywhere.
The entire area was covered with mud and dust. The ceiling tiles in the stores had been torn into tiny shreds and formed piles of confettilike material.
A diesel tractor scooped out rubble from the huge pile. It was running back and forth across a tile floor that had once been in the A & P store. Rescue workers were lifting up partitions and scooping into the torn material, searching for survivors or for bodies.
One woman, dressed in a blue and white print dress, her hair straggling down her face, was standing to the side, crying in dry, choked sobs. Another woman with a C-D armband was trying to comfort her.
Pay-loaders, caterpillars, bulldozers, and heavy wench trucks pulled at the tangled mass of wreckage. I climbed up a section of wall to get a place to brace my camera. A tractor pushed the rubble out from under me.
The rescue workers struggled hurriedly, in a state of semi-panic. They tore at the wreckage with machines, crowbars, and bare hands. The sputtering glare of a cutting torch lit up the scene as a welder cut into a trapped car. The whole scene was a nightmare of mud, lights, rubble, and confusion.
A shock case sat near an Air Force ambulance, holding his head
in his hairs, crying.
Hit Dead Center
in his hands, crying.
The tornado had hit the shopping center dead center. The southeastern end of the building still retained the shape of the original walls. The north section was still standing, although completely gutted. The middle section was unreecognizable.
Ambulance workers, their white uniforms turned dirty brown, and in some spots bright red, struggled over the strewn material with their stretchers. Ambulances left several times a minute.
A group of haggard-faced National Guardsmen, clustered around a portable radio, informed us that there were 99 known injured or dead. No one knew how many were vet undiscovered.
On the east side of the road, there were rows of the gutted shells of new houses. Windows were gone, roofs were collapsed, frames were twisted. No one had entered them yet, to see how many dead or injured they contained.
Tornado
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said all of its operating rooms were filled with injured and more were waiting for treatment.
Shopping Center Destroyed The Ruskin Heights shopping center, a 4-story school, and a church were destroyed as the tornado tore through the area.
Police received several reports that a group had entered the destroyed church shortly before the storm hit and were never seen again. Bricks had tumbled into the basement of the church making the search for members of the group more difficult. A later report said the group of about 60 persons were saved when the floor kept the falling bricks from crushing them.
The Small Business Administration today designated Johnson, Miami, and Franklin Counties in Kansas and Jackson County in Missouri, as disaster areas.
The killer tornado was part of an outbreak of storms which raked three states last night. Tornadoes also struck in parts of Nebraska causing heavy property and livestock losses but took no lives.
Stillwater, Okla. Flooded Heavy rains hit Stillwater, Okla., forcing about 2,000 persons from their homes. Eight inches of rain in four hours caused a dam to break and flood the city. Oklahoma State University was saved from serious flooding because of its location on higher ground.
L. G. BALFOUR CO.
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Phone VI 3-1571
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