My mother wrote this for our family history book. The 1962 Tornado - by Eulalia (Engel) Dahmke On July 12, 1962 the twister came out of the darkened sky from the northwest at about 8:30 PM, skipping and swerving, leaving some areas undamaged while completely destroying other buildings and houses in and around Duncan. Fortunately no one was injured by the tornado which ripped off the roof of the Duncan Grain Company, demolished Albert’s Grocery Store (Bordy Nowicki’s store – this was the brick building on the corner east of the post office). Also it knocked down an entire concrete block wall at the Duncan Irrigation Pump Company and severely damaged the residence of my aunt, Mrs. Emma (Engel) Scholz, the 82 year old mother of Milton Scholz. Mrs. Nellie Porter was with Mrs. Scholz when the twister struck, moving the house four feet off of its foundation and hurling a ten-foot long board through the wall of the house. Although they had to wait to be rescued by the neighbors, neither one was hurt (Emma was in a wheel chair at the time and was not able to walk). The Duncan Fire Department soon received assistance from many surrounding communities in their rescue and cleanup work. Portable generators were brought in to furnish light for the workers. Skylark Speedway brought their huge searchlights from Columbus to provide light on main street. Power and telephone crews worked around the clock to restore poles and wires and service to the village. Approximately 150 volunteers were on hand Sunday to help with the cleanup. Although the tornado caused an estimated damage of $250,000, the people of Duncan had much to be thankful for – no one was killed. That evening Armand Engel (my brother) said the clouds to the north looked bad and he kept watching them, in the meantime a tornado went through south of the house (two miles west of Duncan) and did a lot of damage to the south shelter belt. They thought it was possible there might have been several twisters that night. The timber claim planted by John Ernst survived the 1962 storm. The trees were down along the county road going southwest out of Duncan so the road was blocked and we couldnt get into Duncan from the south. With no telephone service we couldnt get in contact with Armand until he was able to get out and go to Columbus where our parents lived. On Monday some neighbors came to help Armand and Oscar Engel (my father) work on the shelter belt. It was a big job and couldnt be done in a hurry, so Armand and Oscar worked on it for a long time afterwards.
Posted on: Tue, 08 Jul 2014 00:09:11 +0000