In Southern Illinois, a damaging windstorm on Sunday, June 29th was followed, only a few days later, on Wednesday, July 2nd, by another damaging windstorm, which was reported to be, several times the intensity of the first, causing major damage throughout Southern Illinois.
The storm came out of the blue Wednesday, July 2nd around 4:30 p.m. with winds up to 100 mph ripping through at least a half dozen counties, uprooting trees, stripping roofs from buildings and knocking out electric power and phones to thousands of homes and businesses.
A spokesman for Memorial Hospital in Carbondale said another 45 persons were injured and had been treated Wednesday night and early today.
State disaster officials estimated damage between $15 million and $20 million.
Among the hardest hit towns were Chester, West Frankfort, Harrisburg, Steeleville, Marion and Herrin. Carbondale and Murphysboro, where crews were still cleaning up the damage from last Sunday’s storms, also sustained extensive damage.
Authorities in Carbondale reported at least $150,000 damage to the Carbondale Mobile Home Park. The roof of the J.C. Penney store at University Mall caved in, several planes were tipped over at the Southern Illinois Airport, and windows were shattered at the airport terminal.
Up to 2 inches of rain doused much of the area.
Electric power was knocked out for most of the town’s 23,000 residents; just hours after utility crew from CIPS corrected the last of the outages from storms the previous weekend.
Erie Jones, Illinois Director of Emergency Services said Gov. James R. Thompson declared Williamson, Jackson, Saline, Franklin, Randolph and Perry Counties disaster areas. Generators were brought in to back up communities which lost power.
Jack Scheper, Civil Defense Director in Sparta said, “People said the temperature was blistering hot, and within a split second turned ice cold. The sky went from bright to black and green.”
UPI Marion Bureau Manager Samuel Hancock said numerous trees were toppled; windows shattered and power lines were down in Marion, Energy and Herrin. “I know it sounds trite, but it looks like a war zone,” Hancock said.
Officials in Harrisburg reported nearly 100 percent power outages and widespread roof and tree damage.
On Thursday, Mayor Robert Butler said that scarcely a street in the city was open to its full length in the wake of Wednesday’s storm which roared out of the west between 4:30 and 6 p.m. While debris from last weekend’s onslaught still littered numerous residential lawns after street department employees had opened to traffic the streets clogged by the earlier storm, the city was battered by another storm of greater intensity.
Commissioner Henry Burress indicated that sight-seers were a problem in the clean-up effort and with city pumps on backup power for water, the public was asked to limit water usage. He also said that flooding was a growing problem since rainfall had backed up in low lying areas of the city.
Havoc was wrought among buildings in the Town & Country Village shopping center where plate glass windows were broken and roofs damaged or swept away entirely. P.N. Hirsch, Ben Franklin, Teen Fashions, Sears, Village Squire and Lad & Lassie stores were hit. Security guards were on duty during the night at some of the damaged stores to prevent looting. Part of the front of the Marion Electric Co. building on the north side of DeYoung St. was blown out.
Downtown in the Tower Square, a plate glass window was blown out of the building housing Barbara’s Boutique at the junction of the Square with East Main Street.
On the roof of the Williamson County Courthouse a 300 foot strip of metal flashing was ripped up by the wind, but Ray Tregoning, building supervisor, said it was replaced before water leaked into the building.
County Clerk Barney Boren started for his home in Herrin after the storm struck, turned around and returned to the courthouse after encountering falling trees broken by the wind. After a second attempt about 6 p.m. he arrived at his home in Herrin to find part of its roof had been blown away. The home of his son Greg four blocks away and that of his son Paul Roach at Johnston City were also damaged.
The potential damage to Boren’s home was reduced greatly when three youths from Marion, Jon and Joel Cavaness and John Dodd, arrived at the scene and pitched in to shore up the roof in time to prevent damage from rain.
A new two story home under construction by Ray Smith in Smith’s Addition, east Marion, was flattened by the storm in an area which was largely unaffected by the wind last weekend.
As in the case of the previous storm, no serious injuries were reported in Marion.
Firemen answered several emergency calls occasioned by reports of live wires burning trees or broken poles, but there was no serious fire.
On West Main Street, a window was broken in the front of Byassee Keyboard east of the Lions Club depot.
The 500 foot tower of WDDD on Rt. 37 at Cedar Grove was blown down early in the storm but the FM station was back on the air shortly afterwards and throughout the night broadcasting simultaneously with its AM counterpart.
The onslaught of the storm was a “saturation attack” upon the entire county as hardly a community was missed. The resulting paralysis resulted in the closing of many stores and shops Thursday as well as cancellation of classes at John A. Logan College as well as many meetings.
Massive damage was inflicted by the storm on the power and phone grids, by late evening on the following Sunday the 6th, most, but not all of the phone service had been restored. There were still an estimated 2,000 customers primarily in the Marion and Carbondale areas without phone service. Phone damage alone was estimated to cost over three quarters of a million dollars. GTE had over 475 employees working to repair the damage.
By July 7th, the following Monday, the power in Marion was mostly restored, however outages still remained for about 2,000 people largely in Ziegler, Royalton and Herrin. CIPS official, Jess Childers, noted that more than 400 workmen were engaged in repairing the damage which would run into millions of dollars in the six county area.
As in all major storms, the sound of chain saws becomes the norm for days afterward. City Commissioner Burress announced on Tuesday, July 8th, that most all of Marion’s streets had been cleared for traffic, however there were still large piles of limbs and debris sitting on the sides of the streets that would be picked up in the same manner as the annual spring cleanup.
Through all of the clean-up following the storm, the brief relief created by a temperature drop created by the storm was promptly replaced again with oppressive heat and humidity which only added to the misery of citizens who now had no power for cooling.
On July 22nd 1980, an 8/10ths on an inch rain, caused by Hurricane Allen, was the first in Marion since the disastrous windstorm of July 2nd and brought relief from 20 days of heat that saw continuous temperatures exceeding 100 degrees daily.
The rain allowed an almost instant cooling to a temperature of 74 degrees at 8 a.m. and broke the back of the heat wave that had stalked the entire country and was reported to be responsible for at least five deaths among the elderly in Williamson County and an estimated 1,700 nationwide.
(Extracted from Marion Daily Republican ranging from late June to late July 1980)