|
a.
|
Note: e are killed during the horror of tornado sweeping into our Pushmataha County. (Mary Lucille, Ramona Lee and Ella Florence Spence are listed among the casualties. MWL)
One article listed Mrs. Tom Spence and her four children as casualties. Evidently Hazel and one other child survived. MWL
History of Antlers, Oklahoma April 12, 1945 tornado from wikipedia:
Sustained growth occurred for several decades, until April 12, 1945, when Antlers was devastated by a powerful tornado </wiki/Tornado>. Moving southwest to northeast, it destroyed stores and homes in a wide swath, including stores and shops at the south end of High Street.
Sixty-seven residents were killed, and over 300 injured. Antlers High School was established as a makeshift morgue to receive bodies. The most significant destruction occurred in the 300 block of East Main Street, where the large and historic St. Agnes Academy for Choctaw Indians was destroyed. Miraculously, only two lives were lost: nuns who were killed by a falling chimney </wiki/Chimney>. All of the students survived.
U.S. Army troops were dispatched from Camp Maxey </wiki/Camp_Maxey>, Texas, a World War II-era Army base located between Paris and Arthur City, Texas </wiki/Arthur_City,_Texas>. The troops assisted with rescue, maintaining law and order, and clearing rubble.
Meteorologists </wiki/Meteorologists> have since retroactively categorized the Antlers tornado as an F5 on the Fujita Scale </wiki/Fujita_Scale>, the most powerful. Local residents believed there were two tornados striking the town, as two funnels were claimed to have been seen. The Antlers tornado funnel measured a half-mile wide at its base, and the two funnel clouds </wiki/Funnel_clouds> observed locally were within the larger one. The Antlers F5 was so powerful that it could be clearly heard, as well as seen, four miles (6 km) east of town at the Ethel Road crossroads, and as far north as Kosoma.[9]
Note: Published in the "Antlers American" newspaper, April 19, 1945, "Tornado Death Toll", 69 peopl
|
