On April 3, 1974, Xenia, Ohio was ground zero for a killer tornado packing winds up to 300 mph - a disaster that took 34 lives and injured more than 1,000 others.
Many of the dead were youngsters.
Hundreds of homes and businesses - even Xenia High School - were destroyed by the twister that crashed into town at 4:40 p.m. - one of about 150 spawned during a 24-hour outbreak across the Midwest and South.
The city operated two fire stations, employing 36 paid firefighters.
"The homes of many firemen and policemen were damaged (13 homes were destroyed) and yet all the off-duty men were back to work within half an hour," the magazine Fire Engineering reported.
The tornado damaged the city's No. 2 fire station, depositing debris blocking the apparatus ramp. The engine company's crew, in turn, responded on foot.
In major emergencies, ``the normal procedure for firemen on a recall is to report to Station 1. However, because it was impossible to travel by car as the tornado damage extended from one end of town to the other, most men started working in the areas nearest their homes," Fire Engineering said.
With lines of communications down neighboring fire and police departments ordered their personnel to the scene.
"The devastation has been likened to World War II saturation bombing," the Xenia Gazette reported. "Xenia was virtually wiped off the map ... At 1 a.m. today there still were distraught parents walking anxiously through the downtown area looking for their children."
The newspaper described some of the ruins:
"All that could be found of what was once the Mr. Donut Shop on N. Allison Avenue were the stools, standing alone like mushrooms, with the building nowhere in sight.
"Across the street, the Kroehler Mfg. Co., exemplified the terrific impact. A tractor-trailer rig was blown approximately 100 yards onto the roof of the Community Lanes Bowling Alley across the street.
"To the east, the wreckage of the Penn-Central freight train gained most attention. It had been lifted from the tracks and thrown into the Kroger Store parking lot and onto a nearby used car lot. Several fatalities are said connected with this. The Kroger store was obliterated."
It continued:
"Undoubtedly the greatest destruction was in the Arrowhead subdivision where block after block of small brick homes were flattened in an area about halfway between Bellbrook Avenue and W. Second Street. In many instances it was almost impossible to determine houses ever existed."
Aggravating matters, gas and water lines snapped citywide.
Firefighter Charles Beason told the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper that "I could see a roof go up, start spiraling, then just explode into thousands of pieces" as he peered through binoculars.
Fortunately Greene Memorial Hospital was spared, and WHIO-TV weatherman Gil Whitney was credited with saving lives for alerting viewers to the tornado's deadly path toward Arrowhead.
Ten days later, tragedy struck again when a fire at a store used as a temporary shelter killed two relief workers, members of the Ohio Air National Guard.
In the aftermath, bumper stickers appeared declaring "Xenia Lives!" and within a year, 80 percent of the homes and half the businesses had been rebuilt, according to Ohio History Central.
On the tenth anniversary of the disaster, Harold Horton, principal and assistant pastor of the First Church of the Nazarene, recalled: "People were crying, just lying in the streets." Horton spoke in an interview with United Press International.
On May 14, 1886, a tornado killed about 30 people, with houses "picked up as if they were egg shells and carried in this mad rush of water until they were dashed to pieces against bridge abutments and whatever they might come in contact with," the Daily Advocate of Newark, Ohio, reported.
