|
Showing 1 - 1 of
1 matches in All Departments
Wallace Akin was two years old when the Tri-State Tornado picked up
his house-with he and his mother inside-and dropped it atop two
other collapsed buildings. Across town, his father lay unconscious
near his auto shop, close to death, and Akin's brother managed to
crawled from beneath the collapsed shop. All survived. Many others
were not as fortunate: Earlier that afternoon, a supercell
thunderstorm had spawned a tornado so deadly that it set records
against which we still measure all other tornados. The storm ripped
through southeast Missouri, southern Illinois, and southwest
Indiana, killing 695 people and wounding 2,000, in a
record-breaking 219-mile, 3-hour path of destruction. His hometown
was the worst hit, losing 243 people to the tornado.
Using first-person accounts from his family and neighbors,
newspaper stories, and diaries, Akin offers a blow-by-blow account
of the storm from its first sighting to its final minutes. He also
attempts to explain how it began-and how it changed his life.
As a young adult, Akin realized that the weather service could have
warned its victims; research on tornado prediction had ceased for
no apparent reason. This, combined with his upbringing in a town
traumatized by weather, led him to choose a career in geography,
specializing in climate. In The Forgotten Storm, he explains in
clear language why tornadoes happen and how modern man may be
making these storms more severe and more frequent. The result is a
book both thrilling and horrific, renowned for its ability to touch
people's lives by allowing forgotten tales of heroism and personal
loss to come spiraling to the surface, one that adds to our
understanding of the battle between man andnature.
|
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.