Cyclone-Hurricane Visits this City

"Cyclone-Hurricane Visits this City"

"Buildings Unroofed, Chimneys Toppled
Over, Shade-Trees Uprooted, Lawns
Devastated, Crops Damaged but
No Lives Lost. Wires Down."

Submitted by Paul Loatman,
City Historian

Sound familiar? Before you change the wording from "cyclone hurricane" to "tornado," realize that the above headline was a lead-in to a story appearing in the Mechanicville Saturday Mercury on July 8, 1916, not one written in 1998. Without the benefit of a weather channel to consult, old-time Editor Farrington Mead could not decide what to call the meteorological event which hit our town a year before American entry into World War 1. In the course of the same story, he referred to it variously as "an electrical storm, a cyclone-hurricane, a West India hurricane, and a Kansas tornado." Keep in mind that Frank Baum's popular Wonderful Wizard of Oz had been published in 1900, and though the movie about the young girl caught up in the "Kansas tornado" was twenty years off in the future, Editor Mead was evoking a recognizable figure of speech among his readers.

Though, there are a number of similarities between the 1916 storm and our recent tornado, the language used by the media to describe the phenomena now and then is certainly different. To the modem ear, Editor Mead's description of the "terrific wind and copious rainfall .... the wildest electrical display ever seen... and the sudden blast" sounds stilted and artificial. But, in an eerie foretelling of current attitudes, he also wrote: "This section of the country had been free from such storms for half a century, and our citizens had begun to consider themselves immune. " Many of us felt similarly immune until a few weeks ago. No homes were completely destroyed. The 1916 tornado came through town by way of the Hudson View Cemetery, hit some buildings on South Third and South St. and threw the roof off of a building located on Park Ave. partly onto South Main St. and partly through the stained glass window of the Methodist Church. Despite the fact that services were being conducted (the storm struck at 8:30 p.m. on a Sunday evening), only two of the Methodist worshippers were injured slightly. Presaging the almost universal reaction of today's residents, Editor Mead told his readers that is was "miraculous" that no one was injured seriously or killed. After doing its mischief in the center of town, the tornado then moved northward in Riverside and Stillwater.

How far costs of buildings have escalated between 1916 and 1998 is best represented by the fact that Mead apparently believed he was shocking his readers when he reported that some structures which were destroyed would cost up to $5000 to replace. In contrast, damage estimates of the May 31st storm range from $125 to $150 thousand [per structure], a sum hard for most of us to even comprehend. The relative lack of intensity of the earlier tornado is evidenced by two other facts: the City Council which met a few days after the event made no mention of it in its official minutes, and the Mercury claimed that the city was "back to normal celebrating a quiet Fourth of July" in a few days.

There are few people around today who remember the 1916 storm, but one resident who can say she survived two tornadoes is Jennie Desadore who then and now resides on Saratoga Avenue. Whether because of her childhood experience or because her sight and hearing are not as acute now as they were when she was eight, Jennie took the recent tornado in stride. Many of today's generation are not likely to be around in eighty years to recall our own event the way Jennie recalls her own, but there is no doubt that it has left indelible images in all of our minds. More than the vision of twisted trees and telephone poles, more than the pictures of piles of rubble that were formerly homes, and more than the scenes of littered streets and roads, what image will last is the expressions of relief that no one was seriously injured or killed. To say that this was a miracle is a gross understatement and we all seem to be aware of that fact. Yet maybe the most lasting pictures which will impress themselves on the mind of this writer are the simple words "Thank you" painted on the ravaged homes of grateful and courageous survivors who, knowing what the real priorities of life are, thank God that no one lost a loved one. As one resident of Hulin St. told me, "I can replace my house. I can't replace my parents or my children," These are the sentiments of so many.

The tornado of 1998 may have destroyed material things, but it revealed the indomitable spirit of so many people in the face of adversity. If it continues to bring forth the spirit of cooperation, voluntarism, and support which have characterized the last three weeks then the storm of '98 will be credited paradoxically for creating the finest hour in the history of our community.