I’m retired, so I leisurely turn on my TV every morning to hear the news headlines and find out what the weather will be like. I no longer base my attire on the weather, but a quick trip to my mailbox might call for the old umbrella.
I am very impressed with the detail of the weather activity that my morning news channel provides. I can see a map of the whole US and more! They show the movement of all kinds of fronts, most of which I’m not interested in seeing. I’m not a patient person, so sometimes, I turn to my phone to quickly get the latest weather prediction in my city. Technology has come a long way in my lifetime.
A few weeks ago, however, I was glued to the TV because there was devastating tornadic activity in the south. I found myself hanging on every word, every doppler screen, and every choreographed gesture of the meteorologist, looking at their monitor while pointing to the green screen behind them.
Tornados are fascinating as long as I am not in the middle of one. I remember my mother talking about the terrible tornado that hit Gainesville, GA, when she was a young teen. Her family was in Cumming GA, and she told of going outside and looking toward Gainesville, where some of the family had relocated. Many years had passed, but she was clear about the frightening memory from so long ago. In the distance, a little over 20 miles away, she saw the darkest cloud she had ever seen, and it was filled with lightning. She said it looked like the end of the world.
For over 12 hours, on April 5th and 6th in 1936, at least 12 tornadoes left a trail of destruction and sorrow through the Southeast. The focus of this widespread storm was from Tupelo, MS, to Gainesville, GA.
Two tornadoes hit Gainesville, GA, on the morning of April 6, 1936. They were estimated to be F4s and the fifth deadliest ones in recorded history. Before it was retired, the Fujita Scale defined an F4 as having wind speeds between 116 and 200 miles per hour. The newer or enhanced Fujita model labels that tornado intensity as an EF4, with an EF5 being the strongest.
Records vary, but most accounts agree that the significant destruction happened for a short period of 3 minutes in Gainesville. The same series of tornados that killed as many as 250 people and injured over 1,000 in Tupelo reached Gainesville, and there two tornados came toward the city, then merged. The storms killed two hundred and three people there and wounded 1600. More than 2000 were left homeless. Over and over, the people who survived described the pitch-black cloud that engulfed everything and the absolute stillness of the air as a feeling the “end of the world” was coming, and for many that day, it was.
As the roaring sound like a freight train above accompanied a swirling funnel of debris, people tried to escape, but there was nowhere to go. The courthouse and city hall were destroyed. A fire broke out at the Cooper Pants Manufacturing Company, and screams of the women and children were heard above the sound of the wind. Seventy-five souls died there that day, trapped in a stairwell and basement, and perished when the structure collapsed and caught fire. St. Paul Church was said to have been lifted into the air, after which it exploded. At least 40 other people were classified as missing. Fires in the damaged structures made victim identification nearly impossible.
Several people sought shelter and huddled in a downtown department store. Twenty perished when that structure collapsed.
Phone lines were down, the water system was compromised making water access for firefighters limited at best, and make-shift hospitals and morgues were quickly set up everywhere. Doctors, nurses, and ambulances from Lawrenceville, Cumming, and Atlanta rushed there to tend to the wounded. All the town’s clocks had stopped dead at 8:47.
James Harris, a survivor at age six, recalled that he and his brother had started to school, but the ominous black skies caused his mother to call them back. They rode out the storm under a mattress. James said the injured and dying moans lasted most of the day. Newspapers shared tales of children looking for their parents in the rubble. Nearby hospitals were filled.
The location or condition of family members was impossible to obtain for the people in surrounding cities and in Gainesville. Traffic to the area was cut off and diverted in Lawrenceville to allow emergency vehicles to travel.
Before the storm, life was complicated. The great depression, which started in 1929, had already distressed the economy and the way of life for so many. Most accounts agree that 1939 was the end of the depression, but most readers will also agree that for rural areas, the economic effects lasted much longer.
Cadets from nearby Riverside Military Academy arrived shortly after the storm passed to protect the town from looters. Everyone who could help pitched in to rescue trapped people and identify those who left this world that day.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited via rail car and surveyed the devastation three days after the storm. He promised aid to clear and rebuild the devastated town. The challenges faced by emergency vehicles in getting to the damaged areas led to the acceleration of the paving of the highway that connected Lawrenceville, Buford, and Gainesville.
According to one source, the destruction in all states hit by the more than 12 tornados in this system was estimated at $15.9 million in 1936 dollars. Sadly, this wasn’t Gainesville’s first experience with the destruction of a tornado. In 1930, another F4 struck the city and killed 98 people.
There is no way to put a price on the loss of lives. But all were remembered as the city recovered and for years after, as they memorialized that fateful day.
W.M. Brice, an area reporter, wrote a book about the tragedy, A City Laid Waste; Devastation of Gainesville, Georgia. The book is still in print today. Gainesville’s Northeast Georgia History Center has a substantial exhibit dedicated to the 1936 tornado.
We must never forget the devastation that tornadoes are capable of inflicting. With all of the advances in weather forecasting and warning technologies, the weather bureau and other emergency agencies are working on getting the lead time between discovering dangerous weather activity and a warning to the public below 10 minutes. I’m sure most people in Gainesville, GA, had no warning on the morning of April 6, 1936.
