Super Outbreak - Most Significant Tornadoes - Xenia, Ohio

Xenia, Ohio

The tornado that struck the city of Xenia, Ohio stands as the deadliest individual tornado of the 1974 Super Outbreak, killing 34 and destroying a significant portion of the town. It was one of the most intense storms then recorded, stripping some trees bare of their branches, snapping large trees in half and depositing their crowns 50 yards away, and leveling nearly all structures in the damage path.

The tornado formed near Bellbrook, Ohio, southwest of Xenia, at about 4:30pm EDT. It began as a moderate-sized tornado, then intensified while moving northeast at about 50 mph (80 km/h). A passing motorist filmed the tornado at its early stages and noticed that at one point two tornadoes formed and merged into one larger tornado.

Gil Whitney, the weather specialist for WHIO-TV in Dayton, alerted viewers in Montgomery and Greene County (where Xenia is located) about the possible tornado, broadcasting the radar image of the supercell with a pronounced hook echo on the rear flank of the storm several minutes before it actually struck. The storm was visible on radar because of raindrops wrapping around the circulation. When the storm reached Xenia at 4:40pm, apartment buildings, homes, businesses, churches, and schools including Xenia High School were destroyed. Students in the school, practicing for a play, took cover in the main hallway seconds before a direct hit from the tornado. A school bus dropped on top of the stage the students were practicing on. The high school suffered extensive damage with the entire 2nd floor swept off the building.

Several railroad cars were lifted and blown over as the tornado passed over a moving Penn Central freight train in the center of town. The hardest hit area, and the first area struck, were the adjacent Arrowhead and Windsor Park subdivisions near U.S. Route 68, where many houses were completely swept away. It toppled gravestones in Cherry Grove Cemetery, then moved through the length of the downtown business district, passing west of the courthouse, and into the Pinecrest Garden district, which was extensively affected. The still photo below shows the tornado as it passed Greene Memorial Hospital, destroying homes in Pinecrest Gardens northeast of downtown.

The Xenia tornado was recorded on film by one resident, and its sound was recorded on tape by another from inside an apartment complex. Before the tornado hit the building, the resident left the tape recorder on, and it was found after the storm. At the same time a few blocks away, 16 year old Xenia resident Bruce Boyd captured 1 minute and 42 seconds of footage with a "Super-8" 8mm movie camera, a pre-1973 model without sound recording capability. The footage was later paired with the nearby tape recording. The film shows multiple vortices within the larger circulation as the storm swept through Xenia.

A few pictures were taken of the tornado before it entered Xenia and later passing through the city. The early pictures taken by Homer G. Ramby show what the tornado before entering Xenia. The photos taken from inside Xenia suggest that the tornado widened as it moved and turned into an F-5 inside the city.

Upon exiting Xenia, the tornado passed through Wilberforce, heavily damaging several campus and residential buildings of Wilberforce University. Central State University also sustained considerable damage. Afterwards, the tornado weakened before dissipating in Clark County near South Vienna, traveling a little over 30 miles (48 km). Its maximum width was a half-mile (0.8 km) in Xenia. The same parent storm later spawned a weaker tornado northeast of Columbus in Franklin County.

34 people were killed in the disaster, and about 1,150 were injured in Xenia. The death toll included two Ohio Air National Guardsmen deployed for disaster assistance who were killed on April 17 when a fire swept through their temporary barracks in a furniture store. About 1,400 buildings (roughly half of the town) were heavily damaged or destroyed. Damage was estimated at US$100 million.

President Richard Nixon made an unannounced visit to Xenia a few days later. It would be the first (and only) city affected by the 1974 Super Outbreak that he would visit. Upon inspecting the damage, he said:
"As I look back over the disasters, I saw the earthquake in Anchorage in 1964; I saw the hurricanes... Hurricane Camille in 1969 down in Mississippi, and I saw Hurricane Agnes in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. And it is hard to tell the difference among them all, but I would say in terms of destruction, just total devastation, this is the worst I have seen."

President Nixon immediately declared Xenia a disaster area. Although the Federal Disaster Relief Act was already introduced in 1973, it still had not passed Congress. The 1974 Super Outbreak disaster was a catalyst for accelerated passage of the act through Congress in 1974, according to Nixon.

It took several months for the city to recover from the tornado, with the help of the Red Cross and the Ohio National Guard assisting the recovery efforts. Most of the town was quickly re-built afterward.

In recognition of their coverage of the tornado under difficult circumstances, the staff of the Xenia Daily Gazette won the Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting in 1975.

The Xenia tornado was one of two rated F5 that affected Ohio during the outbreak, the other striking the Cincinnati area (see Cincinnati/Sayler Park area tornado, below). Xenia was later struck by two other tornados—both a smaller one in April 1989 and a larger one in September 2000, which was an F4 twister that killed one and injured about 100 in an area parallel to and just north of the 1974 path.

Before the 1974 storm, the city had no tornado sirens. After the F5 tornado hit on April 3, 1974, ten sirens were installed across the area.

Dr. Ted Fujita and a team of colleagues undertook a 10-month study of the 1974 Super Outbreak. Along with discovering much about tornadoes which was not known before, such as the downburst and the microburst, and accessing damage to surrounding structures, the Xenia tornado was determined to be the worst of the 148 storms. A memorial was installed near Xenia City Hall to commemorate the 34 tornado victims.