Agenda - Public Works Committee - 03/20/2018

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Station watched the funnel roar along. The cloud seemed to bounce. It would go up in the air, free from the ground and then dip down to wreck everything it touched. There were two funnel -shaped clouds a few minutes apart following almost the same course, a most unusual phenomenon. B. Weier, hired man, stood in the doorway and watched the barn literally fly away. Refuge in Basement Between this point and six miles further northeast no damage was reported but the cloud struck the W. B. Makowsky place. Mr. and Mrs. Makowsky saw it coming and rushed to the basement. Here the house was lifted off the foundation, leaving the kitchen. A cement silo and barn were wrecked. The next place struck was the Alfred Johnson place occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Guy Walton. Great damage was done here. Walton was alone at home and saw it coming. He dropped into a gully and held onto a tree and escaped injury. Mrs. Guy Walton had been attending a meeting of the Governor Ramsey Club at the W. K. Matheny home, east of Anoka. She left the club early to go to her home, and Mrs. T. G. J. Pease was with her. As they neared Highway 10, Mrs. Walton exclaimed: "There comes a tornado." It seem- ed to be coming right for them. She couldn't back up, so they crossed the tracks onto the highway and rushed into Grotius Giddings' home, asking for safety in the cellar. Mr. Giddings assured them the tornado was passing to the west. It did. The clouds were so dark and covered such an area it looked from there as though the funnel would strike Anoka. Later, Mrs. Walton said she hoped the storm had not done any damage to her place as she stood and watched it. The pictures give but a faint idea of what she found when she arrived home. The great grove of fifty -year -old trees in the front yard were down. The barn demolished, silo ruined, out -buildings wrecked. Every window in the house broken (the storm windows were on, too) and bedding ripped from the beds. Chimneys torn off, wires down. Neighbors rushed to the place, and lifted the barn roof off of several horses. One horse had its back broken and had 'to be killed. Acoltwas killed. In the barn was a new hatching of chicks and they were found alive hunting for something to eat. A gosling had hatched during the storm and it was out looking over a world new to humans as well as little geese. It was a most fortunate thing that Mrs. Walton was not at home. She said if she had been, she would have been in the hay mow looking after some of her tiny chicks. She would likely have been killed when the barn was wrecked. When she came home she found the mother hen and chicks walking about as calmly as you please. 51