THE DEVASTATION OF THE TUPELO TORNADO . 1936.
THE FINGER OF GOD.
On APRIL 5, 1936, an F5 tornado ripped through Elvis’ small hometown of Tupelo, Mississippi.
Elvis was 14 months old, Gladys terrified, took her little son, and they took refuge in the basement of the house of great-uncle Noah Presley, who was the Mayor of East Tupelo and there they stayed safe. With all this horror happening to her and her baby, Gladys protected him.
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When it was over, miraculously, their house, the house that Elvis’s father, Vernon, had built for his newly formed family, had managed to remain standing and with little damage.
Vernon, he was out of town. At that time he was looking for work, so Gladys and Elvis were alone in the house when they saw the storm coming.
The Tupelo tornado killed 233 people and injured at least 700 others, and is the fourth deadliest tornado in US history.
Around 8:30 p.m., the tornado surfaced and touched down in a rural area approximately eight miles from the city. It made its way to Tupelo, laying waste to everything, injuring and killing many people before it reached the West side of Tupelo.
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In the following video you can see the images of the tragedy:
It was retroactively rated an F5 on the Fujita Scale.
The most destructive of all.
Tornadoes with this intensity destroy everything in their path. Cars can be thrown like toys, and buildings lifted off the ground , like cardboard.
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The F5 is colloquially known as the “Finger of God“.
It caused total destruction along its path. Large mansions and houses were completely leveled, causing the death of entire families. The Gum Pond area of ??Tupelo was the hardest hit.
Many bodies were reportedly never recovered. The winds were so strong that the pine needles were embedded in the trunks of the trees.
With more than 900 homes destroyed, estimates indicate that the real total may have reached more than 250 deaths, since few of the devastated black neighborhoods were surveyed, and their deaths were not counted. A stark sample of the terrible racial discrimination of the time.
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The tornado, despite its ferocity, fortunately left Elvis’s home on Old Saltillo Road, East Tupelo relatively undamaged and Elvis and Gladys emerged unscathed from the horror. The house still stands today, just as it did in 1936, though the roof has been replaced due to age, not the tornado.
PICTURES OF THE DISASTER
Information provided by ELVIS. El Chico De Tupelo.
Rosa Garcia Mora.
https://m.facebook.com/102791652501100/
#elviselchicodetupelo
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