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April 3 right here in Murphy was the anniversary of the 1974 tornado which scared the bejabbers out of us, killing four here and two more in Graham County (Stecoah).
Twisters are only a threat in the flat lands, we always smugly told each other, these mountains will protect us from tornadoes and cyclones and high winds of all sorts.
That proved wrong. All wrong.
We usually watch Chattanooga, Tenn., TV weathermen because our weather usually comes from the west. Alabama and Tennessee might get big winds but we felt immune.
I had come to Murphy five years prior, as new editor of the Cherokee Scout, and April 3 is my birthday, so I got to go home early that Wednesday evening 52 years ago, after the newspaper was printed.
My wife and children had baked me a big coconut cake, sang loud as I blew hard. Pieces of coconut and candles flew all over our table.
But before the coming night was over, it would be pieces of trees and houses, sheetrock and sheet metal, debris everywhere from the massive storm.
Bealtown hit hard
A giant black cloud passed over our house at Martins Creek but we got little or no wind. Suddenly the power went off, and stayed off four long days and nights.
The Martins Creek Road over Morgan Hill was a mass of broken trees and electric lines but with two other men and one weak flashlight we hiked through the big “brush pile” into the Bealtown section of Murphy, devastated by the tornado.
Chainsaws were snarling, people were shouting and seeking victims. A baby and an elderly woman were dead, both in mobile homes we usually called trailers. Volunteer workers would cut a driveable tunnel through the downed timber, one lane only but we could drive to town the next morning.
Then as now, the date marks the beginning of forest fire season, and the U.S. Forest Service routinely hires a helicopter and crew for quick transport of firemen into remote locations when needed. I remember telling them to “save me a seat on the chopper.”
This time instead of hauling smokeaters to the woods, the Forest Service men would be surveying storm damage to the timber on government lands. And I could take all the aerial pics I wanted.
Long storm damage trail
Tornadoes, they say, don’t stay very long on the ground. They usually bounce up and down like a yo-yo, falling and rising repeatedly. And once active, they always travel on a southwest-to-northeast axis.
Our hired copter pilot was very co-operative as we tracked the twister, first coming down at Culberson, near the Georgia line.
To us it looked exactly like the path of destruction might have looked if a giant had pushed a giant-size lawnmower toward Murphy, downing houses, trees, power lines, etc., in his path. It crossed over U.S. 64 West, climbed the shoulder of a mountain and then dropped down on Murphy’s Bealtown section.
Then crossed the river and highway again, went over the mountains into Peachtree and finally lifted up and away. We flew all the way to Wayah in Macon County but could find no more damage.
Political kinks
North Carolina had somehow elected a Republican governor from the mountains of Wautauga County (Boone), and we thought he would fly out here that weekend to comfort us, families had lost their homes, lots were injured (some with wounds from flying broken glass) but he didn’t show.
His aides said he was participating in a big national golf tourney at Greensboro and couldn’t make it.
But he did get us federal aid designation and FEMA came in with dozens of singlewide mobile homes for stricken families.
A spontaneous effort to organize donated monies was headed by a local jeweler, enabling families getting mobile homes to do needed site prep, driveways, septic tanks to get settled quickly.
Ted Fujita, weather professor at the University of Chicago, flew over our area repeatedly in a twin-engined plane and called me at the newspaper office. Send me all your photos, he said, and I’ll send you the paper and maps I’m doing on the super outbreak.
I did, he sent us stuff and now there is a tornado damage scale named for him, the so-called F-scale often quoted in media reports.
Some local street preachers had the nerve to state that the tornado was God’s punishment on Murphy for its many sinners.
Didn’t like to hear that at all – I saw Blairsville and Blue Ridge as just as sinful – but they did not get hit by a tornado.
Wally Avett first wrote for the Cherokee Scout as editor in 1969. His books are available as signed copies at the Scout office in downtown Murphy. Call him at 828-837-5531 or email wallyavett@gmail.com.