(Editor’s note: On the first Tuesday of each month, UNMC Today will feature an item on the medical center’s history.)
On March 23, 1913 — Easter Sunday — five tornadoes hit Nebraska, including a devastating F4 twister that hit Omaha and the medical center campus.
Poynter Hall — at that time the only building on the new campus at 42nd and Dewey — was under construction and the College of Medicine would move into the building in the fall.
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Mildred Williams, a medical student at the time of the 1913 tornado, set up an emergency hospital in the Child Saving Institute – which is pictured on the front page of UNMC Today this morning. She treated 50 patients in the building, which also was struck by the massive storm that killed 100 people in Omaha. |
Medical student Mildred Williams (M.D. class of 1914), was “girl interne” at the Child Saving Institute – which sat where the Sorrell Center now stands. She prepared an emergency hospital before the first tornado victim arrived and treated about 50 patients throughout the night and late into the next morning.
Williams treated patients in the CSI even though it had been damaged by the tornado, which struck the southeast corner of the building.
A baby near one of the windows was killed after it was sucked out of the building by the twister.
In all, the Easter Tornado of 1913 killed 110 people in Omaha and injured 400 others to go along with a massive damage and destruction to homes, schools, hospitals, convents, churches, street cars and trains throughout the city.
Photos and story provided by Robert Wigton, M.D., associate dean of the College of Medicine, and John Schleicher of the McGoogan Library of Medicine.
This was one of 6 in a swarm.
Today, the storm would have been a much more serious threat to life and property given the increase in population within the path of the storm. It many also have done more damage to this hospital/campus and to the city's emergency infrastructure given the path of the "Omaha Tornado" and the "Bellevue Tornado", to say nothing of the killer "Yutan Tornado" that destroyed the north half of Yutan before crossing the Platte and damaging Valley and Waterloo, then passing on the north side of Elkhorn on its way towards Ft Calhoun, or the "Havlock Tornado" that followed the path of I80 from NE Lincoln to Greenwood.
This storm did immense damage to the area between 43rd and Leavenworth and 24th and Lake street. It dropped at 6 pm on Easter Sunday. Even though so many died or were injured, we are fortunate that given the extent of the damage, and the population density of northern areas of Omaha at the time, the death toll was as low as it was.
This was a very interesting story. I never knew this happen.
What a heroine Williams was to the campus and the community!
My Great Great Grandmother that lived in Council Bluffs was also killed in this easter tornado of 1913. The tornado storm that day traveled as far as Manning, Iowa, and also destroyed the Trinity Lutheran Church, as when they went to go start collecting the debris from the church, they found newspapers from Omaha. So sad sometimes, mother nature's wrath.
Craig Poole, SPA