West Wind

Last week the American Red Cross ("Still the Greatest Mother in the World") set up headquarters in Birmingham, Ala. and took over its latest emergency parenthood. This time the crippled, homeless and dead--residents of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee and South Carolina*--were victims of a series of mighty whirling winds that rose out of the West and struck 362 lifeless. Houses and shanties of 8,500 persons were plucked bursting into the air or smashed to kindling. It was estimated that some 3,000 people had been injured in the deadly scattered blasts which began devastating Dixie in the late afternoon, lasted all night. Property damage was reckoned at more than $3,000,000. The Red Cross began a $200,000 drive for emergency relief.

Hardest hit State was Alabama, with 299 killed. Hardest hit town was Northport, Ala., across the Warrior River from Tuscaloosa, where 28 died, six in the collapse of a livery stable whither they had fled for safety. The wind dropped into a lumber yard, picked up a cloud of timber and impaled people with gigantic arrows shot from an invisible bow.

Tornado freakishness was plentiful. At Cassville, Ga. chickens were stripped of their feathers. An automobile owned by a Nashville, Tenn. family went hurtling through the side of a barn without puncturing a tire. Luther Kelley of Sylacauga. Ala. lost his second wife. His first died in the tornado of 1917. At Cleveland, Tenn. an infant was snatched from its mother's arms, dropped into a well, drowned. An Alabama farmer hung on a barbed-wire fence while the wind tore him to pieces. A Georgian sailed into a tree with a piece of wood through his arm, hung there helpless all night. One Tom Marcum went out in his yard at Piney Grove, Ala., picked up and returned somebody's receipt book to Northport, 16 miles away. At 4 p. m. the tornado struck the Tuscaloosa Country Club. At 4:15 p. m. members began rummaging among the ruins for their golf clubs.

*Last South Carolina tornado, that of 1930, is recalled by Negroes as the ''chainaberry" storm." Reason: many a chinaberry tree, its close-twigged top offering purchase to the wind, was uprooted and whirled aloft over the country-side.

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