The revised death list given out semi-officially from the tornado stricken area tonight showed little change from the day totals. It divided the dead by states as follows:
Illinois, 675
Indiana, 103
Tennessee, 34
Kentucky, 13
Missouri, 10
Total 835
By S.J Hughes
I.N.S. Staff Corp’t
Benton, Ill., March 21—As though Nature, in one of her bewildering moods had been spurred to greater revels of human destruction by the terrible success of her orgy of fire and winds, there was hurled back into the storm-ravished southern Illinois tonight, amid ruins and despair, the aftermath threat of all great cataclysms—the scourge of pestilence.
Surging toward the vast tented army of destitute and homeless, there came tonight the most dreaded four horsemen, with his weapons of disease and infectious death and all forces were united and re-organized to stem the charge.
From every hospital, relief base in Murphysboro, DeSoto, Carbondale, Benton Gorham, West Frankfort and others there went forward the ironclad order for wholesale inoculation by serums to battle the threatening tetanus, pneumonia and typhoid.
No Water—No Sewers
Great quantities of these serums were imported Saturday night and the vaccination of the thousands of men, women and children began at once. Troops were dispatched from Carbondale, Benton and to all relief bases, there to be further distributed and to the many improvised hospitals.
The sanitation problem has become an enigma. Lack of water and sewage facilities were bringing about tremendous handicaps for physicians and nurses. All water for either drinking or cleansing purposes must first be boiled, under strict order of military executives. Symptoms of blood poisoning were declared rampant.
Splintered wood and metal driven into the bodies of hundreds of the injured provide wounds that were potent with the possibility of disease.
Scores of those who lay exposed in the rain for hours before rescue were on the verge of pneumonia and although actual figures were not available, it is believed this deadly disease, unless checked within the next 24 hours, will have secured a firm foothold.
Miles of tents and crudely constructed shacks abound with the breeding places of disease.
“Isolation” stations established yesterday for victims bearing any indication of contagious maladies were being established in every community.
As yet, the situation is within the scope of the hundreds of doctors and nurses, but almost any moment looms the possibility of a far-reaching plague.
Mass Funeral Service Sunday
And yet, amid this newest terror, final preparations were being made through the night for the gigantic funeral services for Sunday.
Burying has been proceeding with monotonous regularity, the steady trod of footsteps to the cemeteries reflecting the full universal grief that has enveloped this most pitiful spot in the United States.
Plain pipe boxes, with occasionally an unpretentious coffin, have been lowered into the earth, without eulogy or hymns, and often without prayer. The ministers have been too busy with the injured to care for the dead.
But Sunday has been reserved for general prayers and services.
Ministers of all denominations will conduct the mass services tomorrow. Every faith will be represented and blessing asked in a dozen different tongues. For this area supported some of the world’s greatest coal mines and employed hundreds of workers barely able to speak the English language.
Scenes of grief were overwhelming. Picture cemeteries with 50 different funerals simultaneously, with the mourners swathed in bandages and a background of stark ruin, mothers crying to the world of this seeming avalanche of injustice, children frightened, not so much at death, but at their loneliness, fathers and husbands sobbing silently and laboring under grief as a strong man will.
15,000 Homeless
The thousands and thousands of stories of pathos will not be told in a lifetime. Fifteen thousand are homeless. Thirty thousand witnessed this terrible stroke of earthly fury and all suffered a different experience.
But the uneven battle that confronted relief works tonight was the foremost task of salvaging human lives from this sea of desolation.
At West Frankfort, where powerful mounted army searchlights augment the feeble flicker of a half-restored power system, Mr. B.F. Crane, director of medical relief work, was optimistic. The most severe restrictions have been placed in effort on matters of sanitation, even to the extent of fumigating all wearing apparel arriving here from the four corners of the nation.
At Murphysboro, Major Robert W. Davis of the Illinois National Guard exhibited some apprehension.
“The time and conditions are ripe for a disastrous plague,” he said, “that might strike and destroy so quickly it would leave us all helpless.”
Hundreds of tales have been told abut that 60 seconds of horror last Wednesday and more were being recounted tonight.
Tales of Horror
J.E. Crowder, mine foreman, was blown through the door of his supply house, 150 yards through the air and dropped at the edge of a pond. In a haze he saw a number of splashes in the little artificial lake and later the bodies of Mrs. Roscoe Karnes, her three children, and an unidentified man were taken from its waters. They had been blown 2,500 feet. Of this same Karnes family, a total of 11 perished.
In a class room at West Frankfort, 12 children had just entered the room from another class. The room collapsed, killing 11 of them. The room they had just left was untouched. Stanley Reed, storekeeper, was hurled 50 feet and a dead mule dropped on his body. He suffered a dozen broken bones.
A.W. Fairbanks, with his family of five, saw the twister coming, a great yellow-black whirling cloud.
They rushed inside their home and all leaned against the door, thinking it merely a strong wind. They succeeded in holding the door, but the house disappeared from around them. The radiator was all that remained of his automobile.
At Murphysboro, Jeff Jenkins, survivor of two Kansas cyclones, went to his death in a peculiar manner. He had crawled into his little office safe, but before he could pull the heavy door behind him, the storm struck. The telephone, among other things, was hurled directly inside the safe with the force of a bullet, half of the phone imbedding in his chest.
At DeSoto, a railroad spike penetrated the leg of John Reynolds and lodged in the floor of his garage, where he was found conscious but unable to free himself. His efforts to free himself tore the flesh in such a manner that amputation was necessary.
From the front page of The Durham Sun, Sunday morning, March 22, 1925
/newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn84020732/1925-03-22/ed-1/seq-1/#words=MARCH+22%2C+1925
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