Word: tornadoes
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Then the weather around the tornado junction of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas quieted down for a while. But the next day the great, hedgehopping twister was on the go again. This time it struck in the small plantation communities 40 miles south of Little Rock, Ark. (pop. 88,000), cut a 20-mile swath of freakish destruction, destroyed over 1,000 houses and other buildings, killed 34 people. While rescuers searched the wreckage for more bodies, they kept a wary eye on the western horizon...
...telephone workers of Woodward, Okla., the phone strike ended the moment they could dig out from the debris of last fortnight's tornado (TiME, April 21). While union officials ordered workers to ignore the emergency and stay on strike, 30 union operators rushed back to their jobs. Last week they made the strike's end official, sent in their resignations with a blistering telegram: "Girls refuse to stop. Will work as long as needed. . . . Would be ashamed of a union which would put up pickets in a disaster like this...
...City, as in most struck cities, telegraph business zoomed a staggering 50 to 80%. In flooded Michigan, hurried conferences between company and union officials quickly restored emergency service to stricken areas. Radio "hams" took over part of the disaster-message burden in the devastated wake of the Texas-Oklahoma tornado (see Disaster). Denver's harassed company officials indignantly refused to deliver "Come home to lunch" calls from relatives to telephone pickets...
With a roar, the tornado hit. It blew the house down, yanked Beebe out of the basement, 30 feet in the air, and carried him 200 yards due east. Wright was borne 40 feet aloft with "a lot of timber" which battered and scratched him. He landed some 300 yards away in a wild plum thicket. After the storm had passed, bewildered cattle stood bellowing, boards and sticks driven into their sides. Only the concrete jail remained intact. In the town's crumpled ruins, Wright and Beebe and other survivors found 16 dead and dying...
...twister roared on, destroying 35 houses in Whitehorse, Okla. Then it split up into smaller storms that skittered off into Kansas. From White Deer to Whitehorse it had cut a swath 1½ miles wide (the widest* tornado in U.S. history), and marked its trail with 155 counted dead...