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     While the bells were ringing for the evening mass and a hundred-thousand Omaha inhabitants were preparing to go to an evening celebration of the resurrection (Easter Sunday night), the elements themselves were preparing to cause a destruction of peoples lives and a devastation of homesteads, like never before in the history of America. A tornado with such power like never seen before roared from the direction of the southwest to the northeast through the thickest inhabited part of the city and transformed everything it found in its path into an inseparable heap of rubble.

     Around 5 o’clock in the afternoon, the whitish sky gradually became covered with grayish yellow cloud masses. Thousands were directing their glances towards the west, where one would expect unusually strong thunderstorms. Lightning began to flash on the western horizon. A cloud burst with large hail mixed with rain came down. Then came all at once quickly towards us an enormous, deep black, funnel formed cloud. It brought death and ruins within the tornado cloud. It sounded like several express trains coming towards us all at once. It left a path of destruction about seven miles long and five houses wide.

     This beastly storm caused in a few minutes a confusion that even with the liveliest imagination one was not able to paint the image of the reality, which was occurring. Looking over the mass rubble taught you the material devastation. But neither literature nor illustrations would be able to describe the unspeakable horror and shock of the suddenly homeless families, the suffering of the women and children who nearly lost their minds brought on by the horrible catastrophe, crying and wandering aimlessly between the rubble of their homes. And as if the force of the storm was not enough, the suffering at its peak, fires broke out underneath the rubble from the several ovens, which were knocked over. And many of the unlucky ones, struggling to fight death under the tons of rubble, were burned alive.

     Beginning in the southwest part of the city, it traveled in a southeast [1] direction through the heaviest populated part of the city, within 5 minutes the storm destroyed 140 lives, transformed 1500 homesteads into ruins and made approximately 2500 people homeless.