1917 Coles County Tornado

The Storm:  Its Time and Nature.

On Saturday afternoon, May 26, 1917, at 3:26, one of the most destructive tornadoes ever known in the State of Illinois swept through the City of Mattoon.  Everybody “felt” that it was a “strange” day, a day of gloom and heaviness, a day of fears and misgivings, a day impossible to forget for those who experienced its leaden and depressing hours. Yet it was not until the earlier part of the afternoon that men began to scan the low and angry clouds of the west with alarm. Even when the portent of the gathering gloom began to make itself apparent, men still either refused to heed the promptings of their better judgements, or else defied their judgments with that most terrible of all fallacies—a blind faith in the past which says: “because a destructive storm has never visited our city it never will.”  When the storm struck the city with its relentless fury and irresistible whirl, the residents, with very few exceptions, were at their accustomed tasks.

The storm literally swooped upon the city with a whirl and whistle which reminded one of the onward rush of lumbering freight trains in mass formation.  The first destruction was registered at the county line three miles west of Mattoon.  From this point, the storm, whirling at a rate of 120 miles per hour and advancing at a speed of 40 miles, followed a course due east until it reached the city limits where it swerved for half a mile to the north. At the Powell Lane Road it again swept eastward and burrowed into the heart of a thriving resident district in the northwest part of the city.  Demolishing houses, public buildings, and industrial plants, it continued eastward leaving a swath of ruin and destruction to a depth of half a mile across the entire length of the city. Leaving Mattoon, the progress was still eastward until Loxa, a village mid-way between Mattoon and Charleston was reached; here the storm lifted, doing but slight damage to flues and roofs.  After eight miles it struck again four miles west of Charleston and continued its ravages through the County seat and off into the country to the southeast.

The storm was followed by a deluge of rain and hail, which while it prevented further devastation by fire, nevertheless added to the horror and wretchedness of the destruction. The duration of the disaster was brief. For a few minutes only, the fury of the gale ripped and roared and whirled, sweeping people and buildings, cattle and trees into a vortex of indescribable chaos and confusion. The destruction was appalling. From DeWitt Avenue, the center of the storm’s path, for 26 blocks there was ruin and destruction. Men, women and children, buried beneath debris, were crying for assistance; the injured, groaning under the agony of the intense suffering, were imploring aid; the more fortunate, dazed and mud bespattered, were groping for relatives and loved ones; whilst the bodies of the dead dotted the devastated region. Four hundred ninety-six homes were utterly demolished, and three hundred and forty-three partially destroyed. Four industrial plants were little better than a heap of ruins, three frame churches were total wrecks, four school buildings were partially destroyed, the public mausoleum was roofless and the cemetery a tangled mass of uprooted trees and fallen tomb stones, whilst the City Lighting Plant, the Lighting Plant of Public Service Company, the Illinois Central and Big Four Railways, the Western Union and the Coles County Telephone Company had all suffered heavy damage.  (Report of Tornado Disaster at Mattoon, Illinois Saturday, May 26, 1917; 1918 The Gazette printing Company Mattoon, Illinois)

The Story of Charleston’s Awful Calamity

 Dealing death and destruction in its path, a terrific tornado swept the district, north of Madison Street, at 3:45 o’clock Saturday afternoon, May 26, leaving in its wake a total of 34 dead, many injured and a property loss of nearly one million dollars.  The tornado which passed thru the city in all of its fury, trapped women and children in their homes like rats in a trap.  Being in the daytime, it found the men at their work in the business district and a number of children in their rooms in the Normal school.  The public schools do not hold session on Saturdays. Some of the people did not have time to seek shelter in more secure parts of their homes before the house was leveled to the ground. Others sought refuge in their cellars, while still others left their homes to seek protection in the homes of neighbors.

 As a demonstration of the insignificance of man as compared with the mighty forces of nature, the passing of the cyclone was a majestic revelation to those who were so fortunate as to be beyond the reach of its terrible fury.

 It was grand, it was tremendous, it was awful. A sublime spectacle that but few persons are privileged to witness in this life.

Mere words cannot convey to the mind of an outsider the awfulness of its uncontrollable power. Perhaps the soldiers in the trenches in Europe may be able at times to comprehend the terribleness of it all—no others can who have not gone thru a similar ordeal.

 Bodies of victims were found in buildings, yards, and fields. Scenes following the storm were heart rendering and sickening in the extreme. Early rescue workers, armed with axes and picks, found the dead, dying, injured and homeless, as the storm had left them. The cries of relatives seeking loved ones, were pathetic and excited deepest empathy among the workers.  

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