CHOP WAY TO WOMAN

Mrs. Mary Eldridge, aged 65, was buried in the ruins of the home of her grandson, Ray Davenport, Twenty-seventh and Franklin, for two hours, while members of the Council Bluffs fire department chopped their way to her. Mrs. Eldridge suffered severe bruises, and from exposure. She was taken to the partially demolished home of H. J. Petersen, 2726 Franklin, and put to bed in the best room in the house, which was soaked with water and minus windows and doors.

Mrs. Ray Davenport, whose husband is a draughtsman at Union Pacific headquarters, was injured by the debris of the Davenport home.

Mrs. Petersen served coffee to the Council Bluffs fire department as soon as they had put out the fire in her house. The men stood around a wrecked table and made merry over their feast, which was served from broken dishes and dirty utensils, blackened by the smoke and storm.

HEROINES OF THE STORM

One hundred and seventy-six telephone girls heroically stuck to their places at the switchboards of the Webster exchange during and after the tornado, while dead bodies, taken from wreckage in the neighborhood, were laid out in one of the rest rooms and the injured were being cared for by physicians and nurses in another.

Military headquarters were also established there for the direction of troops that had been called into the city to patrol the devastated district.

At 9 o'clock Mayor Dahlman, Police Commissioner J. J. Ryder and Police Chief Dunn reached the exchange, and took up the work of rescue and protection of property.

The Rev. Father P. J. Judge, of the Sacred Heart church, went about among the injured and dying, praying for them and comforting them.

Hot coffee was for a time the only "medicine" that could be secured for the injured. This was administered by Miss Anna Barnes, a trained nurse , who walked through the fallen trees, telephone poles and wreckage of buildings that littered the streets and made the passage of vehicles impossible. She later took charge of the nurses at the exchange.

F. E. Russell, 65 years old, of 2322 North Thirtieth street, had been rescued by A. Bryant, 2615 Ames avenue, from the burning ruins of a brick building on Twenty-fourth street. His face was terribly disfigured and his entire body covered with blood, as he lay on the floor of the temporary hospital in the telephone exchange building. In his delirium he talked incoherently of the horrors of the tornado and the flames that followed it.

A NURSE ON THE JOB

Dr. Mildred Williams, girl interne at the Child Saving institute, and a senior in the Omaha Medical college, before the first person had arrived asking help or before Mrs. Harriet Heller, acting superintendent, had quieted the children, had prepared an emergency hospital. She bathed, bandaged, soothed and comforted all throughout the night and late into the morning until patients had stopped coming.

Fifty or more were treated by her. Five members of a gang of graders that had recently established its camp directly opposite the institute were brought in. Four of them died.

REFUGEES GATHER

At the top of a high hill overlooking the burning lines of wreckage 300 refugees from a large storm-stricken area had gathered. Some were silent, some wept as they surveyed the ruin spread out below them, and some frantically implored aid in searching for missing relatives.

The firemen were unable to get their engines within half a mile of the fires, and ran stumbling through the darkness, carrying their hose upon their shoulders. Arrived at the fires they often found water plugs covered under tons of debris, and usually threw away their hose so that they might advance the urgent work of rescue.

ONE OF THE TELEPHONE GIRLS

Miss Grace Chipman, 2219 South Twenty-ninth street, operator at, the Webster exchange station, was on duty when the storm broke and did not leave until 3 o'clock Monday afternoon.

She quit only after Superintendent Carter, in charge of operations, took a taxi to the station and ordered her to leave and take rest.

Miss Chipman was working with one arm in a sling. She did all her "plugging" with one hand. A telephone physician told her several times to leave, but she refused, knowing she was a competent operator and wanting the best of service to be given.

Four girls in the Douglas exchange walked six miles to work Monday morning. Four lived in Benson and two beyond the lake near East Omaha.

The 'phone company kept sixty of its operators in hotels downtown Sunday night so they would not have to pass through the storm lines to and from home.

AUTOISTS RACE WITH TORNADO

R. N. Booth and Harold Hart tried to beat the tornado with an automobile and failed. They were driving south on Fortieth street and had reached Farnam street when the storm struck. Just at this point their engine died. Taking time to crank the engine lost them the race.

When Booth jumped into the seat after starting the engine the men felt themselves lifted up and both "ducked" to avoid flying timbers. They could see nothing, and could hear only a loud roar.

The auto landed near Dodge street, right side up, with both men clinging to their seats. It was facing in the opposite direction from that in which it was headed when the storm struck. It landed gently, and without enough jar to break the springs or wheels. But the engine had to be cranked again.

HUNDREDS OF DESTITUTE

Hundreds of homeless poor in the district worst hit by the storm, in the neighborhood of Twenty-fourth and Lake streets, gathered about the ruins the morning after the disaster and wept for very helplessness. For one or two of them to accomplish anything by digging into the ruins of their homes was manifestly impossible. Some suspected that valuable furniture and other family possessions might be intact beneath the ruins of their homes, but discouragement and overwhelming sorrow kept them from attempting to move masses of wreckage that would have been too heavy for a dozen men.

Snow covered the ruins toward noon, and made the already horrible spectacle a scene of desolation difficult to imagine.

SLEEPING IN THE RUINS

Hundreds slept in snow-covered beds Monday night. With windows and doors gone, roofs lifted, and great jagged cracks in the walls, the remains of many homes in the devastated area were unfit for habitation. Yet the occupants, driven to desperation, and unwilling to seek charity, where hundreds are suffering for food and clothing, strove to make the best of the situation and get along without aid from the more fortunate. Groups of the shelterless gathered in the streets, and black and white clasped hands in the community of destitution.

Moving vans were backed up near the ruins of the homes of those able to pay for having their goods moved. Others were trying to pick out some rag, or a little provender, and constructed frail sheds out of the ruins to shelter what they could find from the snow.

STORM HALTS WEDDING CEREMONY

The wedding of Miss Augusta Marquardt and Herman Evers, at the German-English Lutheran church, Twenty-eighth and Parker streets, Sunday evening, was abruptly ended, and the ceremonies cut short by the tornado, which destroyed the church and all neighboring buildings.

An elaborate Easter wedding had been planned for 5 o'clock, but unforeseen delays kept the party from the church until 5:30. The storm was gathering as the bridal party arrived in automobiles, and hastily marched into the church. Lights were burning, for darkness was gathering.

The Rev. E. T. Otto, pastor of the church, was waiting at the altar. The party nervously took seats in front of the church, and windows were closed.

"Herman Evers, do you take this woman to be-"

"Can't hear you," said the groom.

The remainder of the ceremony was made so short that the bride and groom are thinking about having it done over again, so as to be sure they are married.

The choir began to sing "Oh Promise Me," but the strains of the organ were drowned in the roar of the on-coming storm. The bride and groom rushed from the church and jumped into a waiting automobile, which hurried them toward the home of the bride's parents, 2506 Maple street. They were obliged to desert the machine and run into a cellar. The auto was carried away, and has not been seen since.

The wedding party was in consternation as rocks and timbers began to shower into the church, which was mostly of frame construction. The pastor's house joined the church in the rear, and his wife and babies rushed into the church.

MINISTER LEADS THE WAY TO SAFETY

"This way!" shouted the minister, pushing his parishioners into the cellar. Prof. J. Hilgendorf of the parochial school grasped Lando, the 1-year-old son of the pastor in his arms, and jumped down the cellarway just as the floor began to rise in the air. Paul Hilgendorf and Paul and Will Raschuh followed. Mrs. Otto waited by the cellar door for her husband, who had paused to turn out two lights. The cellar steps were going into the air, and tower, roof and belfry were tumbling about their ears, as the pastor and his wife joined the crowd in the basement. The church is one of the most complete wrecks in the city.

For only a few minutes the party remained pinned in a dark hole, unable to move, and praying for air. A rescuing party pulled enough of the wreckage away that the victims could be taken out.

The marriage license of Mr. and Mrs. Evers is gone, having blown out of the hand of the best man when the crash came. The pastor's residence, the church and the school were scattered over a half mile of territory. Church records for the past quarter of a century were found a block away.

MOTHER AND SON INSANE

Bert Murray, landscape gardener, had both his houses at 4422 Jones street destroyed. The hedge around the grounds was completely uprooted and trees and shrubs were torn out of the ground.

Mrs. Murray with her five children, were found crowded into a corner of a cellar, by Mrs. Mabel Whitman, 215 North Twenty-third, a short time after the storm. Mrs. Murray and her eldest son were both temporarily insane and it was several hours before they were restored.

HOMES OF THE WEALTHY DESTROYED

Homes of some of Omaha's wealthiest business and professional men were among the worst wrecked of any struck by the tornado. Size and strength of timbers, beauty of architecture and costliness of finish were alike in uselessness to withstand the fury of the storm. Costly residences and palaces in the West Farnam and Bemis Park districts fared no better than the humble negro cottages in the Lake street district.

A WOMAN RESCUER GIVES RELIEF

Relief work of the most earnest sort was done by victims of the storm who lost many of their possessions. Those who saved anything realized keenly the suffering of their more unfortunate neighbors who had nothing at all left.

An example of this kind of relief work was the case of Mr. and Mrs. F. J. Stafford, 2228 Lake street. The five-room cottage occupied by the Staffords suffered badly in the storm, but it was the only house for some distance that was left standing on its foundation. Mr. Stafford, who is a blacksmith, set about repairing the damage Monday morning, and the house was made so nearly habitable that the family shared half its home with the medical corps of the army.

A red cross station, in charge of Lieutenant John Trinner, army surgeon, was established in the three front rooms. In the two back rooms Mrs. Stafford cared for relatives who were made destitute by the storm.

The partially wrecked house was turned into an emergency hospital immediately after the passage of the storm, and twenty sufferers were cared for all night, although a big tree was sticking through one window, and the entire interior was drenched with rain.

MRS. STAFFORD AT WORK

Mrs. Stafford was one of the few women rescuers who were at work in the streets before the electric power had been turned off, and while live wires were sputtering everywhere. She climbed through a broken window to care for a man and boy who had lain down beside the steps of their house when they saw the storm coming. She found the man pinned under a telephone pole, with his back broken. The boy was frantically calling for help. She assisted in pulling the man out on the sidewalk, and went on to help other sufferers.

When Mrs. Stafford returned to her home in an hour she found it filled with scared and hysterical women. One of them had no clothes on, having been blown out of a bath tub. All the rest had gotten an hallucination that they, too, were nude, and they were grabbing quilts and remnants of garments to wrap around themselves. The woman who really had no clothes took Mrs. Stafford's coat, and disappeared.

So many of the women helped themselves in their frenzy that Mrs. Stafford had scarcely enough clothes to keep warm, and had to wear her husband's coat. She cared for several children who were left without homes.

When Mrs. Stafford missed her husband from the house, about 10, o'clock Sunday night, her strained nerves gave way, and for two hours she was insane and raving. When her husband returned from rescue work, she gradually recovered.

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The excerpts you are reading are from a small book entitled "Tornado - Omaha, Easter Sunday, March 23rd - 1913" and was distributed by the Omaha Daily News. You can read the entire booklet by clicking HERE

Shorthly thereafter, another one was published, this time from the Omaha Bee - You can see that one by clicking HERE