Salix, Iowa Tornado

June 12, 1899

THREE ARE KILLED.

SALIX, Ia., June 12. -- Three persons met death in a tornado at 5:30 o'clock last evening, after having once secured a place of safety in a cyclone cellar.  After remaining in the refuge a few moments they fancied the storm had passed and emerged just as the house above them came tumbling in ruins, carrying death to three and fatal injuries to a fourth.

The dead are:

MALLOY, JOHN, a farmer

MALLOY, MRS., wife of the above

MALLOY, HARRY, aged 16

Injured:

MALLOY, BESSIE, aged 18, skull fracture, will die.

MALLOY, THOMAS, body hurt

MALLOY, PATRICK, severe bruises.

The force of the wind was sufficient to flatten fences, trees and telegraph wires so that little news of the surrounding county is obtainable.

The homes of Phil Berger, Joe Bernard and Patrick O'Neil were all reduced to kindling wood.  The occupants, it is reported, all escaped serious injury.  Pat Malloy, who was badly injured, tells a graphic story of the storm.  He says houses, barns, live stock and human beings were sucked up by the terrible funnel-shaped cloud, the air appearing to be filled with wrecked buildings and other debris for over half a mile high.

In the Malloy family there were, besides those killed and injured, the aged father and mother of John Malloy and seven sons and one daughter, who escaped injury.  These were still in the cyclone cellar, but were coming out when the house fell upon those at the entrance.

The family was at supper when the funnel-shaped cloud was first seen, and Dick Malloy told his parent to go tot he cellar.  He ran to the home of Mrs. Cassell, a widow, across the road, to warn her and her seven children.  He took them to the cellar and the house was whirled away, injuring no one.  He had to hold one boy by the legs as he was being drawn up by the suction of the wind.   But the Malloy family, across the road, only remained in the cellar about five minutes as the father suggested that the cloud was only rain.  They came up and in an instant the house was demolished.  The dead and injured members were scattered among the ruins.

The conductor of a freight train saw the cloud and stopped his train before it got in the storm, and when he reached the town he held his train long enough to take the injured to the hospital at Sioux City, sixteen miles distant.  Wild rumors are afloat of more damage in Woodburn county, but cannot be verified.

Fort Wayne News, Fort Wayne, IN, 12 Jun 1899

Another Tornado Victim. 

SIOUX CITY, Ia, June 12. -- Another name was added today to the list of victims of Sunday's tornado near Salix, Ia., Bessie Malloy, aged nineteen, dying in the hospital here.  It is thought all the rest of the injured will recover.

The Nebraska State Journal, Lincoln, NE, 13 Jun 1899

Fifth Victim of the Salix Storm

Another victim of the tornado near Salix. this state, has been added to the list, Thomas Malloy dying at a Sioux City hospital of the shock to the nervous system. this makes the fifth victim, all in the Malloy family.

The Chief Reporter, Perry, IA 29 Jun 1899

A terrific windstorm, afterwards called the Salix Cyclone, struck just south of the town on June 11, 1899, at 5:30 in the afternoon.  A number of homes were blown down and hundreds of head of stock were killed and crippled.  Five out of nine members of the John Malloy family were killed or fatally injured when the tornado struck their home on the southeast corner of Salix.  The dwellings of Mrs. Cora Hassell, Philip Burger, and Joseph Bernard were all within a circle of 300 yards, directly in the path of the twister, and were destroyed.  Richard Malloy rushed Mrs. Hassell and her children to the basement, thus saving their lives.

The storm, it was estimated, cut a path about four miles long and 200 yards wide, leaving behind a trail of wrecked houses and barns, destroying grain and livestock.  It blew spokes out of wagon wheels, plucked chickens of their feathers, and carried a coat out of the Malloy house, hanging it neatly on a tree.  The Malloy family had just been at supper when one of the sons, Richard, said he smelled brimstone, and looking out, saw a funnel-shaped cloud in the sky.   He urged the family to go into the cellar, then ran over to warn Mrs. Hassell.  The other Malloys went below for a few minutes, but thinking the storm was only a cloud burst, started back upstairs.  They were caught n the twister which at that moment struck and demolished their house.  When a searching part located them, Mrs. Malloy's lifeless body lay on that of her husband.  Within a radius of 20 feet were their children - - Tom, Pat, Fred, Harry, Bessie, and Jack.  Harry died within an hour.

Just before the storm Conductor J. N. Pollock of the Sioux City and Pacific freight train No. 30, had stopped on the track a short distance from the Malloy home. When he saw the injured victims of the storm, he converted a freight car into an ambulance with the assistance of Richard Malloy and some neighbors, and then made a fast run to Sioux City.  The surviving members of the family were taken to St. Joseph's Hospital.  Tom and Bessie died, but fourteen-year-old Pat Malloy, who suffered a broken collarbone and back injuries, survived.  This was the Patrick Malloy who became Assistant Attorney General of the United States in the spring of 1933.  Unfortunately his career was brief.  Malloy died in early 1934.

Woodbury County History, Iowa 1942, page 87  Search this book on line at ancestry.com

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