MORE CASES OF DESt.i.tUTION

Many cases of dest.i.tution were reported on Wednesday. It took much time to prepare card indexes of sufferers' wants and to make requisitions on the central relief station at the Auditorium for supplies. While these formalities were being carried out want stalked through disconsolate homes from one corner of the city to the other. The task of caring for those needing food, clothing, supplies and money seemed to be too large for the relief forces.

PLANS FOR REBUILDING

As early as Tuesday plans for rebuilding the city were under way. The business men formed a corporation to conduct the undertaking in a systematic way, and to a.s.sist the unfortunates who lost their homes and personal effects.

The Real Estate Exchange immediately took steps to prevent the raising of rents. Cases of alleged attempted extortion, however, were reported, some of them by members of the Exchange itself. Executives of that body decided to deal harshly with any owners found taking advantage of those forced to secure new homes on account of the tornado.

A public appeal sent out by the Commercial Club stated that 642 homes were totally wrecked, 1,669 were damaged and 3,179 persons made homeless. There was need of reconstruction, indeed!

[Ill.u.s.tration: Photograph by Brown Bros.

This scene shows the desolation caused by the tornado wrecking a whole street of houses at Omaha, Nebraska]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Copyright by George Grantham Bain.

A view showing the destructive force of the tornado at Omaha, where happy homes stood a few hours before. Many residents were caught as in a trap and instantly killed or fatally maimed]

CHAPTER XIX

OMAHA: "THE GATE CITY OF THE WEST"

LARGEST CITY IN NEBRASKA--GATE TO THE WEST--GROWTH OF INDUSTRIES--SPLENDID INSt.i.tUTIONS--A PROSPEROUS CITY--REMARKABLE ACTIVITY.

Omaha, "the Gate City," largest in Nebraska, is a typical plains town, proud of its industry and its climb on the census list. It stands eighty feet above the Missouri on the west bank of that river opposite Council Bluffs, Iowa. For twenty-four square miles stretch its many churches, educational inst.i.tutions and large manufacturing plants, with the pleasant residential section lying above.

On the site of the present city Lewis and Clark in 1804 held council with the Indians. There were a trading station and stockade at the place in 1825 presided over by pioneer J. B. Royce. The first permanent settlement was made there in 1854. A tribe of Dakota Indians that lived in the region gave the city its name.

When the Union Pacific Railroad was stretching steel hands westward in 1864 Omaha was the most northerly outfitting point for overland wagon trains to the far West. At that time it took its name of "Gate City"

and then its sudden growth began. In 1910 the population was 124,000.

GROWTH OF INDUSTRIES

Because of its location it soon began to draw industries. Packing is one of its leading industries today. So extensive is this business that Omaha ranks third among cities of the United States in packing. Silver smelting, distilling and brewing are some of the other pursuits that keep its citizens busy.

SPLENDID INSt.i.tUTIONS

Among the more important buildings are the Federal Building, Court House, a city hall, two high schools, one of which is among the finest in the country, a convention hall, the Auditorium and the Public Library. Omaha is the see of Roman Catholic and Protestant Episcopal bishoprics. Among the educational inst.i.tutions are a state school for the deaf; the medical department and orthopedic branch of the University of Nebraska; a Presbyterian Theological Seminary; and Creighton University under Jesuit control. The princ.i.p.al newspapers are the _Omaha Bee_, _World-Herald_ and the _News_. The _Omaha Bee_ was established in 1871 by Edward Rosewater, who made it one of the most influential Republican journals in the West. The _World-Herald_, founded in 1865 by George L. Miller, was edited by William Jennings Bryan from 1894 to 1896.

Omaha is the headquarters of the United States military department of the Missouri, and there are military posts at Fort Omaha, immediately north, and Fort Crook, ten miles south of the city.

REMARKABLE ACTIVITY

Prairie freighting and Missouri river navigation, were of importance before the construction of the Union Pacific railway, and the activity of the city in securing the freighting interest gave her an initial start over the other cities of the state. Council Bluffs was the legal, but Omaha the practical, eastern terminus of that great undertaking, work on which began at Omaha in December, 1863. The city was already connected as early as 1863 by telegraph with Chicago, St. Louis, and since 1861 with San Francisco. Lines of the present great Rock Island, Burlington and Northwestern railway systems all entered the city in the years 1867-1868. Meat-packing began as early as 1871, but its first great advance followed the removal of the Union stock-yards south of the city in 1884. South Omaha was rapidly built up around them. A Trans-Mississippi Exposition ill.u.s.trating the progress and resources of the states west of the Mississippi was held at Omaha in 1898. It represented an investment of $2,000,000, and in spite of financial depression and wartime, ninety per cent of their subscriptions were returned in dividends to the stockholders.

The original town site occupied an elongated and elevated river terrace, now given over wholly to business; behind this are hills and bluffs over which the residential districts have extended.

CHAPTER XX

OTHER DAMAGE FROM THE NEBRASKA TORNADO

GREAT HAVOC IN NEBRASKA TOWNS--DESCRIPTION OF THE TORNADO--YUTAN A SUFFERER--THE TUMBLING HOUSES OF BENSON--CURIOUS TRAGEDIES--HOUSES TUMBLING ABOUT.

The storm which lashed its way through Omaha on Easter Sunday had already carried havoc into other Nebraska towns. William c.o.o.n, president of an automobile company of Lincoln, Nebraska, gave a stirring description of the tornado as he saw it from the platform of an observation car on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad:

DESCRIPTION OF THE TORNADO

"For miles," he said, "it seemed as if the train were being pursued by the storm. We were approaching Ralston, Neb., when I first noticed the strange cloud mounting the sky. Before that it had been clear."

Mr. c.o.o.n, from his observation car seat, saw the storm strike Ralston.

"The pa.s.sengers sat as if glued to their seats when the cloud struck,"

he said.

"The engineer brought the engine to a stop and the pa.s.sengers ran over to the wreckage of the houses. We could hear the groans of dying men and the wails and shrieks of injured women and children. I entered a house, or rather what had been a house, and beneath me lay a woman. I looked and I knew that she was dead. We got all of the injured out of the ruins and brought them to the train.

"We were about to leave when our attention was called to a little house some distance from the others. It had been wrecked and moved from its foundation, but we found a mother and her little baby lying upon a bed uninjured.

"The cloud wheeled and made towards South Omaha. We were not far behind, but our way was blocked by the debris the tornado had thrown on the tracks. Then, too, we stopped frequently to pick up the injured. There were some with their limbs torn off and all were cut and bleeding."

A Chicagoan, who withheld his name, told of the scenes at Omaha when the train stopped there. He said:

"I was just recovering from what I had seen on the train when we pulled into Omaha with the injured. It was night then, but such a night. The sky was lighted with a red glare, and the streets were filled with people who acted as though they were mad. Frequently the cries of the wounded, unloaded at the station, were drowned by terrific peals of thunder."

It is difficult for any one who has not lived through a tornado to have any conception of what such a storm can do. Tornadic force means anything more than one hundred miles an hour. There have been instances where tornadoes have shaved off the stone sides of buildings as if they had been sliced away by a stonecutter. Forecaster Scarr, of New York, said that the tornado that wrought destruction in Nebraska may have been of the resistless kind that simply ground stone and brick to dust and carried up its electrified funnel the remnants of every building it struck. The tornado finally became almost like a ma.s.s of whirling steel, revolving faster than the blades of the swiftest planer and cutting everything to pieces in its course.

YUTAN A SUFFERER

The tornado first struck the little village of Yutan, southwest of Omaha. Yutan was practically wiped off the map and its population of four hundred left desolate. After the buildings had been razed the wreckage caught fire. "The town is burning! We'll all be killed!" some kept crying, and this added to the fears of the others. Many persons were killed and many injured. Waterloo, a village of about equal size to the northeast across the Platte River, suffered like damage. Wires were snapped off in all directions, and it took many hours to gather and circulate news of the disaster.

Leaving desolation behind it the tornado swept at a rate of possibly one hundred and fifty miles an hour into Berlin. This little village had a population of about two hundred. The storm killed seven and injured thirty. The habitations were virtually wiped out. A church, an elevator and part of the residence of State Senator Buck were all that remained standing of what was a prosperous town.

THE TUMBLING HOUSES OF BENSON

On its way to Omaha the tornado struck Benson and Yutan. Benson is a thriving town of over three thousand. Here property damage was great and many persons were injured. As the houses began to tumble a little girl dressed in white started from one of the houses and ran down the street with her hands above her head. Just then the side of a house came soaring through the air, and shooting suddenly downward it struck the child and buried her beneath it. When the storm had pa.s.sed, the injured were lying all about the streets.