1913 Omaha Nebraska Tornado

     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.

     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.

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.

     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.

     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.