Editor’s Note: The article below is a reproduction of the front page story that appeared in the April 4, 1974, edition of the Bellefontaine Examiner about the deadly series of tornados April 3-4 that devastated Xenia, along with many other parts of the United States. It is one of many stories to appear in the newspaper about the deadly weather events. The tornado touched down in Xenia approximately 4:40 p.m. Wednesday, April 3, 1974. Check back for periodic updates to this story.
Xenia Ripped By Tornado, 39 Dead
Toll Reaches 305 in 10 States
WILBERFORCE — Central State University, severely damaged by tornados that struck Wednesday, April 3, 1974, was closed for the remainder of the year today.
Ohio Board of Regents Chancellor James A. Norton inspected the university located near Xenia and said the school would close and the 2,300 students were sent home.
XENIA — At least 39 persons were killed in this city of 25,000 by a tornado that shattered half the town in less than five minutes.
Tornados also hit other parts of Ohio. Four were killed in Cincinnati where damage is estimated at $15 million (approximately $100 million in 2024 value).
Gov. John J. Gilligan, in Xenia, asked the federal government to declare this southwestern Ohio community 20 miles east of Dayton a disaster area. Some 2,500 Air and National Guardsmen were sent into Xenia and elsewhere.
“I’ve seen tornados before, but none that touched this big of a swath,” Gilligan said. “This boggles the mind. There is just no way to calculate the damage.”
Officials said the twister was 300 yards wide and about three miles long and damaged if not destroyed 50 percent of the city. At least 300 houses were destroyed and property damage ran in the millions fo dollars.
About 1,200 were homeless and were given shelter at the armory, motels and hotels.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in my life, “ said Greene County Sheriff Russell Bradley at Xenia. “I watched a big, black funnel cloud pass through the town for about three or four minutes.
“At one point I watched it make a left turn and then watched it lift up off the ground,” he added.
Xenia Police Chief Roy Jordan said it might take most of the day to count the number of dead and injured, who filled the hospitals here and were taken to surrounding cities.
“Conservatively speaking, I’d say Xenia is about 50 percent leveled,” he said.
The town was swarming with about 2,500 National Guardsmen ordered to help with medical assistance, communications, police and security work and cleanup duties. Guardsmen walked around in pairs.
Telephone communication was wiped out and the phone company tried to develop some kind of communication system, while taking as many incoming calls from concerned relatives as they could handle.
Jill Stahlings, 29, a resident of the Arrowhead development saw the funnel cloud coming and tried to get help from her husband at work.
“Please come and save us,” she cried over the phone, clutching her son and daughter close to her.
Diana Ivey, 28, heard the wind blow before her house shook.
“I grabbed my little boy Keith off the couch and the wind broke through the wall,” she said. “It picked us up and lifted us about ten feet out of the house.
“I was trying to look for something to hold onto against the wall,” she said “but the next thing I knew I was shielding Keith between our house and the next door neighbors.”
Some residents volunteered to do rescue work in the Arrowhead section. They hesitated about using heavy machinery for fear of striking injured people.
Many were resigned to wait until daybreak to resume operations.
Several restaurants and supermarkets were leveled, according to a spokesman at a nearby state Highway Patrol post. He added it might take a couple of days to find bodies.
The injured were taken to hospitals in surrounding cities, including Dayton about 20 miles west, after local hospitals were filled.
A temporary morgue was set up at Xenia by police and National Guardsmen.
Temporary shelter for the estimated 1,200 homeless was set up in the Xenia National Guard Armory.
Twisters also touched down at London in Madison County where the top of the court house was hit; Pisgah in Butler County; Circleville in Pickaway County; the Columbus suburb of New Albany where two houses and a mobile home were leveled and in Paulding County in northwest Ohio. _____________________________________________________________________________________________Almost 100 tornados* slashed through 10 Southern and Midwestern states Wednesday, leveling a toll of death and damage that was the worst in 49 years.
By 7 a.m. Eastern time, the death toll had risen to 305 after a night of storms that swept great areas of the country and neighboring Canada.
Officials were too busy counting bodies to give damage estimates which were certain to be many millions of dollars.
*The event holds the record for the greatest number of F5 tornados (30 in 13 states) in a single day. The violent twisters killed 335 people and injured more than 6,000 on April 3-4, 1974. More than 27,000 families suffered loss. Damage was estimated then at $843 million, or more than $5 billion in 2024 dollars, according to various sources.
