1974 Tornado Superoutbreak:
Part 2 – Ground Zero for Disaster
Wednesday, April 3, 1974. As school children in Xenia, Ohio waited for their ride home and workers watched the clock tick slowly towards quitting time, a monstrous tornado whipped wildly towards their small town. In just minutes, the small peaceful city of Xenia became ground zero for the nation's worst tornado outbreak.
The deadly tornado plowed into the Arrowhead subdivision on the southwestern side of Xenia at 4:35 EDT. The tornado, an F5, was among the strongest ever witnessed, with winds estimated between 261 and 318 mph. It sped furiously across town at a speed of about 52 mph.
Frantic residents scrambled for cover as the twister's shrieking winds slammed the historic Xenia Hotel. The tornado showed no mercy – yanking thick trees from the ground, cars from the streets, and people from their homes. It tossed two tractor-trailers 150 feet into the air and onto the roof of a bowling alley. A wooden utility pole about 20 feet long snapped in half like a twig and soared 160 feet away from its original location.
In about the same amount of time it takes a television station to pause for a commercial break, the tornado tore a deadly swath all the way across Xenia.
"Houses, businesses, and landscape that had been so familiar to me had vanished and were now just piles of rubble, not unlike pictures of bombed-out buildings in WWII Europe," said meteorologist Don Halsey, who was on duty at the Vandalia Weather Service Office in Dayton, Ohio when the tornado hit.
A hunch by Halsey's co-worker, meteorologist Chester Rathfon, allowed Vandalia forecasters to issue a tornado warning to key points with 18 minutes lead time. Technology in the 1970s made it very difficult for meteorologists to spot the telltale signs of a tornado, called "hook echoes." But Rathfon decided the smudge he saw on his screen was a possible hook echo. Indeed, he was right.
Halsey immediately composed a tornado warning and disseminated it to the media and emergency management. The time on Halsey's teletype message was 1620EDT.
"Fifteen minutes later, Xenia was decimated," said Halsey.
Halsey's first call after issuing the warning was to his two daughters, who lived in Xenia with their mother. "Although I knew the path missed their house, I wanted to make sure they were there and not on their way home from school," said Halsey.
The twister sped out of Xenia as quickly as it entered. As survivors slowly crawled out to survey the damage, nothing could have prepared them for what they saw. The direct hit on their city damaged 2,000 buildings and destroyed 1,300 others. Thirty-three people were dead and 1,600 had been hurt.
"When you see the toys, the clothes, the mattress in the tree, nothing left of the house but the foundation, then the real impact on human life really hits you," said Dr. Greg Forbes, Severe Weather Expert at The Weather Channel.
If any luck was to be found during this disaster, it may have been that the tornado hit after school hours. Had the tornado occurred while school was in session, the death toll could have been even more devastating. Five of the city's 10 schools were nearly demolished; two others sustained minor damage.
"One high school looked as if a bomb was dropped on it," recalled Xenia resident Don Dunstan. "The buses looked like an angry boy threw his toys."
One of the beams from the gymnasium of West Junior High landed 450 feet away from the school. In addition to Xenia's schools, the twister smashed into Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio, just a few miles to the northeast.
"The picture that amazed me the most was of an automobile rolled up into a near perfect ball," said Halsey. "A young lady from Wilberforce drove directly into the path."
Halsey, Rathfon, and another meteorologist on duty received commendations from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for their actions that fateful day.
"It is possible we did save some lives," said Halsey. "I only wish we could have saved them all. I have never displayed that award."
