PATH OF DESTRUCTION: RESIDENTS REMEMBER DAMAGE FROM TORNADO THAT HIT CITY FIFTY YEARS AGO

There are many stories of the 1949 tornado that devastated Cape Girardeau. A common thread runs through people's recollections. It was a storm that will long be remembered.

Irene Wright and some Cape Girardeau friends were showing guests the city, capping off their visit with a picnic in the park.

"We were down to dessert," said Wright. "Someone mentioned that we should leave. The clouds were looking peculiar."

The group was under a large tree, but rain began falling, and some debris was flying through the air.

Then, they heard a noise, like a roaring train. Wright said, "It was definitely time to leave."

As the picnickers drove from the park, the winds grew stronger. They turned on Henderson Street to the home of a friend.

"Our friends were not home," said Wright, "but the doors were unlocked and we went into the house to wait out the storm. By this time, it was really bad."

Moments later, the tornado struck the city.

Without warning

The twister, which struck at 6:56 p.m. Saturday, May 21, 1949, stayed on the ground along a path from Gordonville Road to Capaha Park to Dunklin and New Madrid streets and into the Marble City Heights and Red Star subdivisions, where the majority of the 22 deaths occurred.

Then, all was quiet in Cape Girardeau -- "eerily so" said one Southeast Missourian newspaper reporter.

That silence was broken by people digging through rubble and the sound of sirens as ambulances took the wounded to hospitals.

There was no power, no water.

It was a very long night

During its 6-minute run, the tornado sent 72 people to area hospitals, and hundreds of other minor injuries were reported.

Some 202 homes were destroyed, 231 more were damaged, 19 businesses were destroyed and 14 more damaged.

Total loss was estimated at between $3 million and $4 million.

The tornado cut a 300- to 350-yard swatch along a six-mile path before crossing the Mississippi River into Illinois.

One Cape Girardeau woman -- then a young girl -- watched the tornado happenings from the basement of her home on Bertling Street.

"Everything was real calm for a minute," recalled Joan Griffaw, who was 9 at the time.

"There weren't many houses in the area at that time," she said. "We could see pieces of lumber and tree limbs sailing through the air."

"Homes were flattened," she said. "Some of our friends in the Red Star Subdivision had been killed or injured."

The Naval Reserve and National Guard were mobilized, the Red Cross moved in quickly to give aid. There was no power or water in the city.

An F-3 with F-4 damages

At the time of the tornado, there was no "Fujita Scale," a zero-to-6 rating of tornadoes, based on damages.

"We studied the 1949 tornado," says Mary Lamm of the National Weather Service Bureau at Paducah, Ky. "There were two tornadoes that day in Cape Girardeau County. One of them would have been listed at F-3 on the Fujita Scale. The other, the one that hit the city of Cape Girardeau, was a predominantly F-3 with F-4 damages.

The F-3 tornado did claim the life of a farmer in the county.

Today, the same tornado in the same area and path could cause more damage and destruction because of the area's growth and development.

However, advance warnings might cut down on death and injury. In 1949, there was no such thing as a tornado watch. Today, the National Weather Service keeps watch on the skies and keeps the public informed via television, radio and disaster organizations.

Walter J. Ford, a Cape Girardeau businessman, didn't see the tornado at work in 1949, but he saw the aftermath.

"I was sitting in the Broadway Theater with a friend, Gary Rust, watching the show," said Ford. "The lights flickered, the film faded out a couple of times, but we didn't know what was going on, until we left the theater."

"We walked down Broadway and to the 400 block of Themis where we lived," said Ford this week. "Nobody was out. The streets were deserted."

"When we arrived home, my mom told us the whole north end of town had been blown away," said Ford.

Ford said he and Rust then walked to Broadway and Henderson, where officers stopped them, saying they couldn't go into the area.

The pair got through when Rust told him he lived on Dunklin Street. Ford and Rust spent the night cleaning away debris at Rust's house.

Ford's late father, Walter H. Ford, was mayor at the time, and helped organize the disaster response.

The late Garland (G.B.) Fronabarger, a photographer for the Southeast Missourian, was hanging out with a Life Magazine photographer late that afternoon at the Marquette Hotel.

Fronabarger often talked about the tornado.

He said he had not expected a tornado.

"This one just popped up," he said.

Fronabarger and the Life photographer, Gordon Coster, who was in town to shoot construction of a pipeline bridge across the Mississippi River, went to the roof of the Marquette Hotel, where they shot photographs of the advancing tornado.

Coster's pictures wound up in a two-page layout in Life Magazine, June 6, 1949.

TORNADO OF 1949

Life photographer, Gordon Coster, climbed to the roof of the Marquette Hotel, where he photographied the advancing tornado. Coster's pictures wound up in a two-page layout in Life Magazine, June 6, 1949.