Record strength tornado tears through Panhandle

by Bartee Hailie

 

The only F5 tornado ever to touch down in thenorthern most part of the Lone Star State tore through the Texas Panhandle on Apr. 9, 1947 leaving death and destruction in its 100-mile-long wake. Sixty-eight years ago, “tornado” was not a word weather predictors used in their forecasts. The thinking behind this unwritten rule was that it would do more harm than good to issue ominous warnings of a possible twister. All the uninformed public could do was to keep an eye on the threatening skies just as their ancestors had done. The first member of what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) later deduced to be a “family” of five or six tornadoes came to earth in Carson County southwest of White Deer at about 5:40 p.m. It stayed on the ground for a dozen miles before breaking up east of Skellytown west of Pampa. During its short stay, the funnel derailed 24 cars of a 61-car freight train hurting two railroad workers and collapsing a farm house on the lone occupant, who also lived through the frightening experience. Soon after the initial tornado disappeared into the storm cloud, a second was spotted five miles northwest of Pampa at approximately five minutes after six. At roughly the same time, two Santa Fe signalmen southwest of Miami (Roberts County) sighted a cluster of five twisters on a northeasterly course toward Canadian. The biggest of the quintet, which the eyewitnesses swore was a mile wide, broke out of the pack and passed within three miles of the Hemphill County seat. It was an unnerving close call for Canadian, but the next two communities would not be so lucky. Fifteen miles separated the Hemphill County hamlet of Glazier and slightly larger Higgins in adjacent Lipscomb, the last Texas county a motorist passes through on U.S. Highway 60 before crossing the border into Oklahoma. In the late 1940’s, the two proverbial wide spots in the road had a combined population of no more than 700.  So unbelievably wide that it actually engulfed the tiny settlement, the tornado roared through Glazier at seven o’clock. The titanic twister crushed the defenseless village leaving only a single private residence and the concrete jail still standing. Everything else, man-made and natural, was instantly reduced to unrecognizable rubble. Hail the size of baseballs announced the arrival of the doomsday disaster in nearby Higgins. Inhabitants were running for cover, when the tornado ripped through the small town destroying half of the homes and the entire business district. The last location on the twister’s hit list was Woodward, Oklahoma, where 100 city blocks were completely destroyed. The violent vortex, measuring an unimaginable two miles across, packed such a powerful punch that it tossed a 20-ton steel boiler tank a block and a half. One hundred and seven Oklahomans lost their lives that terrible evening making the Woodward tornado the deadliest in Sooner State history. Back in Glazier and Higgins dazed survivors with the help of volunteers from miles in all directions picked through the pieces of their shattered lives. An Associated Press report filed at Canadian provided readers with disjointed details of the twin tragedy: “Twenty persons were reported killed at Higgins, Texas, on the Oklahoma line and ambulance drivers said the business district there was burning. Ten bodies of unidentified victims from Higgins…were taken to a funeral home at Shattuck, Oklahoma. The (50 bed) Shattuck hospital received 150 injured persons. Townspeople at Shattuck ranged the countryside around Higgins in automobiles seeking out injured and dead. “Nine bodies of persons killed at Glazier were in a mortuary here (Canadian). The Canadian hospital was filled to overflowing with (the) injured. Emergency hospitals were set up in the Methodist church and a hotel.” The first newspaperman on the scene spoke to veterans of both world wars, who told him the bombed-out cities they had seen in Europe paled in comparison to their demolished hometowns. Then he wrote this moving first-hand account for the next edition of the Amarillo Daily News: “Stricken residents of Higgins and Glazier are wandering between Amarillo and Oklahoma City searching for loved ones, dead or alive, victims of the terrible tornado which flattened those two towns, as though an atomic bomb had been dropped on them. Tears streaming down their cheeks, men, women and children slowly enter funeral homes, hospital and emergency stations housing the dead and injured, they lift covers from still forms. Suddenly a scream pierces the silence. A loved one has been found.” In Glazier the official count was 17 dead and 40 injured, while just up the road in Higgins the final numbers were 51 and 232. Glazier came back from a major fire in 1916 but not from the tornado of 1947, as many of those that cheated death chose to move rather than rebuild. The post office closed in 1959, and 41 years later the population had shrunk to 48. Higgins, however, is hanging on. Most survivors decided to stay, and in 2000 more than 400 Texans called the tough little town home. Did you ever get your autographed copy of “Murder Most Texan,” Bartee’s latest book? You may order it in the “General Store” at barteehaile.com or by mailing a