KANSAS CITY - This weekend (Sunday night) marked the 70th anniversary of what is still the deadliest tornado in Kansas history.
It was the night of May 25th, 1955, when a tornado tore into Udall in Cowley County for three minutes, leaving three-fourths (70%) of the people in town with injuries. The twister hit at about 10:30 p.m., destroying 192 buildings in Udall. The tornado went from the southwest to the northeast, cutting a swath straight through the center of the town.
Udall is located 24 miles south-southeast of Wichita.
On a track for 30 miles and averaging a half-mile wide, the tornado leveled most of Udall, killed 75 people, leaving 270 victims injured, and caused $2.25 million damage.
Before hitting Udall, the same tornado also killed five children three miles to the northeast of Oxford in Sumner County, bringing its total number of fatalities to 80. The deceased ranged in age from an 89-year-old woman, to a six-month-old baby girl.
Tragically, the "all-clear" had been given during the 10-o'clock news on television on that night, a Wednesday; 20 minutes later, there was an F5 tornado headed towards Udall.
At 9:58 p.m., eyewitnesses reported a tornado about eight miles west of Arkansas City, in Cowley County, which was heading north. This was after a deadly tornado earlier in the hour had hit Blackwell, Oklahoma.
Several minutes later, another eyewitness saw that tornado heading north, experiencing hail the size of hen's eggs.
The tornado hit the southwest corner of the Udall first, heading northeast, destroying the entire width of the town about three-fourths of a mile. The only habitable structure left in Udall was a frame dwelling with only minor damage on the extreme northwest edge of town.
Just about the only buildings in town not completely leveled were a few two-story masonry buildings from which the upper story had been removed.
A municipal water tower in the northwest part of town was toppled, and train cars blown off the tracks. City Hall, three churches, the old grade school, and the new $250,000 high school were destroyed. Survivors found a pickup truck wrapped around a tree and stripped of everything but its frame and tires.
The major destruction ended after the tornado hit Udall; the twister had a continuous path for more than 50 miles.
Communications were much slower in 1955, and it took an hour or more to start getting emergency workers to affected areas. During the 10-o'clock hour, most emergency personnel and law enforcement were concerned about the deadly tornado that had hit Blackwell, Oklahoma, more than an hour earlier, as emergency personnel started heading there. Officials in Kansas started becoming aware that Udall had been hit at about 11:45 p.m., an hour after the town had been hit.
One farmer about three miles south of Udall saw it coming, saying, "It sounded like a bunch of jets and looked black as an oil slush pond. I didn't look long. I lit out fo the cellar."
At 10:29 p.m., outside phone connecitons with Udall were broken; Operator Mary Taylor died at her switchboard.
The closest hospitals were William Newton and St. Mary's Hospitals, 17 miles southeast in Winfield; William Newton hospital took in 129 patients after the storm. Several victims were taken to St. Luke's Hospital in Wellington, 23 miles to the southwest, while the remainder were taken to three hospitals in Wichita to the northwest.
The Udall tornado is listed as the 25th most deadly tornado in U.S. history.