Recollections of the Lorain Tornado

Lorain, Ohio
1924
by
Charles J. Meek

On June 24, 1924, a terrible tornado desecrated the entire northern half of the city, with our house exactly in the middle of the destruction. My cousins from Waynesburg, Penna. and I had many times enjoyed swimming in the placid Lake Erie, but suddenly, on this date, the lake was drawn up into the clouds and dumped on our area, fish and all.

On this day, I had gone over to visit my friend Robert Farris, whose father was a very good friend of Papa’s and a Principal at Brownell Grade School. Bob was teaching me how to play poker, using rubber bands as collateral. He lived on Oberlin Ave. near a butcher shop where we often bought our meat. It was about two blocks from our house. Mamma had a strange feeling she should call Mrs. Farris and ask her to send me home immediately.
Within half an hour the sky took on an orange-yellow cast, air very stagnant and heavy, which was odd for the middle of the afternoon. Mamma grew very worried, Papa restless. Mamma suddenly had the thought to close the kitchen window in the back of the house, which was toward the West. I remember her yelling to Papa that there was an enormous black cloud approaching fast.

She did not have time to close the window and found herself trapped between the window and the cellar door, leaning against the outside wall. She then had a premonition she should stay where she was and she would not be hurt. She said later that she felt the wall heave and sigh against her back and she saw slate, debris, etc., coming through the window.

After the tornado was over, we found an old fashioned straight razor stuck firmly in the dining room door jam, much slate stuck in the kitchen wall opposite the window, and much other debris stuck in the wall everywhere. It was an extremely dangerous tornado. Grandpa Waychoff had warned Mamma back in 1913, when they got married, that she was going into tornado country.

When the house started to shake, Papa took Cemantha and me by the hand and pushed us into a clothes closet which led off the hallway under the upstairs staircase. On the other side of the hallway was the bathroom with a window that looked out over the driveway to the south. The kitchen was west of the dining room with a connecting door on the north side of the partition. The hallway was offset on the south side of the dining room and led to the living room which had a very large window in front to the east which we would now call a “picture window”. To the north of the living room was an open porch on the northeast corner of the house. Papa had just brought home a crate full of live chickens which he left on the porch.

Having put us in the closet, Papa stood there with his left foot holding the closet door open. He then opened the bathroom door and held it open with his right foot which placed his back to the direction of the storm. The bathroom window was open. Within seconds, his cigar flamed up like a bonfire. For three terrible minutes, he held open the doors and fought the fire, while all kinds of debris floated past him down the hall toward the living room.
Hamilton Avenue
Fortunately, Papa did not get a scratch, but it is unbelievable that a large object, possibly a large tree limb, had passed by him and with great force had put a round hole about 8 inches in diameter in the picture window as if put there by a glass cutter, without shattering the rest of the glass. How this could have happened without any of the debris hurting him is astounding, for Papa was a big man and almost completely filled the hallway with his large figure, 5 foot 10 inches and 220 pounds.

The noise was so terrific that our ears were not capable of hearing it. It seemed quiet, although we knew it wasn't. Luckily, the open kitchen and bathroom windows kept our house from exploding and leaving its foundation as houses in a two block radius had done. We were dead center of this tornado.

It only took a few minutes. The tornado formed over Lake Erie west of town. Entering near Lake View Park to the west side of the city, it swung inland and encompassed an area most seriously about ten blocks deep, turning east again and running across Black River to the east side area and back to the lake. Further south was much rain and wind but little destruction.
There had been a train wreck earlier in the afternoon. A B&O freight train did not get the signal that the Railroad Turn Bridge over Black River was turned for a passing ore freighter traveling upriver to the steel plant. The train had run off the bridge into the water. Mr. And Mrs. Coulter, next door north, took Howard, Bill and Bobby, their sons, and Lilly, Mrs. Coulter’s sister, to see the wreck and arrived home just as the tornado hit. Howard grabbed Bobby, my best friend, took him to the back of the car and hunched over Bobby to protect him.

A timber of some kind struck Howard on the back, flipped over his shoulder and struck Bobby on the head killing him. For a long time afterward, I would stand between our houses and call for Bobby to come out and play. Poor Mrs. Coulter, who was very kind, would come out to remind me that Bobby was no longer with us. I would turn sadly away, not comprehending that my pal was really gone.

Ida Snyder, Mrs. Coulter’s other sister who lived with them, had not gone to the train wreck. She was upstairs when the tornado struck. Feeling the house rock, she rushed downstairs which descended the north wall, turned in the hallway beside their living room to run into the dining room. The piano from the living room started to move and followed behind her. Frightened, she ran to the northwest corner of the dining room, the piano still following her. The piano turned sideways, trapping her in the corner just as the upper floors caved in. The piano saved her life for the whole house had exploded, the outside walls looking like a huge barrel. When the outside walls bulged out, the floor joists were released and the floors dropped below.

In the house next door south lived the Williams family. They had just returned from shopping. Papa had come home shortly before and had put his car in our garage and did something he had never done before. The early Reo cars had an emergency brake and, in addition, a ratchet on the foot brake so you could set it to hold down. Papa set both brakes before he came into the house. He had left the garage door open because in mid afternoon he would probably be called out again to visit another patient.

Our driveway was common to the Williams’ house although Papa owned the driveway. At the edge of our garage, Mr. Williams had extended it so he could drive south of our garage and lead into his garage. Mr. Williams had just driven in when the tornado hit. He told Mrs. Williams to stay put until he could open the back door of his house.

The tornado grabbed him and rolled him down the driveway and across the street into the neighbors yard without injuring him. At the same time, Papa’s car started rolling back down the driveway coming to a stop at the northeast corner of the Williams’ house , keeping the house from turning any more off its foundation. The car crossed the path Mr. Williams had taken. Why he was not run over nobody knows.
The people who owned the house on the corner of 5th and Hamilton, a half block away, were just sitting down to eat supper. The tornado lifted up the whole house and blew it away, leaving them all sitting at the table, wet but otherwise not disturbed.

The Van Deusen family, my father’s lawyer who lived on 5th about a block away, was entertaining a group of visitors and relatives. They decided to run for the basement, and lined up against the wall when the house caved in on them. It killed every other one as they stood against the wall.

One of Papa’s friends, walking along Oberlin Ave., was picked up, lifted above the trees and houses, carried three blocks to Reid Ave. and set down as easy as a feather with no injury.

Many, though, were killed when the theater downtown caved in on the occupants. The roller-skating rink, near the lake on the east side of Black River, was taken from its foundation by the tornado and thrown into the lake, skaters and all.

Across the street at the Ewer’s house were three large oak trees with many straws from some farmer’s field sticking out like nails that had been hammered in by the tremendous force of the winds.

After it was over, we went outside for a look. Not a feather was missing from Papa’s chickens, for the northeast corner of any house is the pivot point in a tornado whose circular winds move always counterclockwise. There was destruction everywhere. It was unbelievable when a few minutes before all had been so peaceful. Water was high in the streets with fish jumping around. The sewers could not cope with the dumping of so much of the lake on the city.

When leaving the house to go to the High School, Papa insisted on going first in case any sinkholes developed during the storm. I tried to get him to allow me to go first even though the water was waist high on me, because I knew how to swim and he didn’t. He wouldn’t hear of it, so off we went to the High School building a block away, the only structure we could see that was still standing.

We stayed there about a week. Papa organized the medical and nursing staffs at the High School and managed to get only a few hours sleep that whole week. The dead were laid in the hallways and the injured were everywhere, in every room, being tenderly cared for by the medics.

The following week we moved in with a family named Vorhees who lived in central Lorain. Mr. Vorhees was a good friend of Papa’s and Mrs. Vorhees was his favorite nurse. I will always remember the kindness of this wonderful family.
A tornado forms a tremendous vacuum at its center. With windows and doors closed, the normal pressure inside a house creates an enormous force to equalize its pressure with the outside and will, therefore, explode like a balloon blown up beyond its capacity. Windows are blown out from within and roofs are blown off to be carted away by the excessive winds.

Lorain houses had been built with slate roofs which caused much damage. After the tornado an ordinance was passed requiring all roofs to be laid with asphalt shingles.

Our house was the only one for blocks around which was still structurally sound but it had no roof, all the plastering had dissolved down to the lathing, and all the windows were sucked out except the kitchen, bathroom and picture window in the front room which had the big hole in the middle.