Customer Reviews

Tornado! 84 Minutes, 94 Lives

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At the time this book was written, the Worcester tornado had the highest tornadic winds in recorded history, at 321 mph. (This changed with the Oklahoma tornado in the late 1990s and the Nashville tornado a year or two later.)

I've heard limited stories about the tornado in my life. For example, my mother and her family (in Southern Worcester) watched money floating over the street and around their front steps in a "torrential downpour", but they thought it was only flooding from the heavy rains. Most residents (those outside the impact area) only had a nebulous encounter with the tornado, if they saw it at all; many didn't know what had happened until the next day.

Contrary to other reviews, "Tornado!" is well-written and clear -- unless you're a kindergartener! (I think this proves most people graduating high school in the last dozen or so years have barely functional English.) The detail is amazing. John O'Toole has an uncanny knack for selecting details that bring this monster to life, especially for people who have never been in a tornado. On the one hand, cars in the Ararat Street neighboorhood are sandblasted to bare metal; on the other, a raw egg levitates through the entire first floor of a house and lands gently atop a piano, uncracked! Mr. O'Toole recounts first-hand tales with the dignity (and horror) they deserve -- particularly the Oslund baby's death, and the man (probably in shock) who refuses to drive a tornado victim to the hospital because he doesn't want blood in his new car.

After reading "Tornado!", you'll never look at Worcester the same way again! Drive around the Quabbin Reservoir and imagine you're one of the row-boaters on the open water, witnessing the birth of the tornadic beast. Visit the renovated Assumption College (now Quinsigamond Community College -- Assumption rebuilt elsewhere), and try to guess which part of the Administration building has been replaced. From the hill, look down at Norton Company and picture those buildings ripped to shreds. Drive up Ararat Street and pretend you're the most lucky driver in the world -- dodging an entire tree which rolls down the hill at you, but turns sideways at the last second. Or imagine yourself a ship's captain in Boston Harbor (or beyond), 40+ miles away; what in the world all those frozen mattresses are doing floating in the ocean in June? Or a shopper -- what's with the pulverized tree leaves swirling through the downtown Boston streets?

The pictures in the center section are amazing. The Weather Channel's "Storm Stories", constantly cutting away from any action, cannot compare. The only better visuals I've ever seen were on an anniversary website the Worcester Telegram hosted a few years ago. It posted hundreds of residents' pictures, many in color, mostly showing the aftermath. Unfortunately that website is gone now -- or maybe it's hidden in the paid content. (However, you can find a page of user stories at [...] In general, beware the "facts" you find on websites if you can't verify them. One website claims the broken Aeronometer is a myth -- it's not. Another said the winds of the tornado were 700 mph -- this is Earth, not Jupiter!

This is the rare non-fiction book I read over and over again. When I was a child, I was terrified of tornadoes -- I even had nightmares regularly -- though I had never seen a tornado. It started one summer when our cousin was babysitting us at his house. He had us doing tornado drills, hiding behind the couch in the cellar. I know now that this must have been the day a tornado hit an airport in Connecticut.

Somehow, reading John O'Toole's book ended my nightmares. It made the tornado real for me. My imagination stopped working overtime in response to my childhood NON-encounter. (There was no Weather Channel until well after I graduated high school.) Somehow, knowing what a tornado looked like, and understanding how the actions of Worcester tornado victims did (or didn't) help them survive, took away the dark unknown that fed my nightmares.

I look at pictures of "hook-echoes" now and wonder, would things have turned out differently if we'd known what it was -- that weird shape on the Boston Doppler Radar its first day online?

Whew! Try reading one of O'Toole's run-on, rambling sentences aloud! Great picture collection; but editor was asleep at the wheel. The drama would flow much more smoothly and the prose be far more digestible if O'Toole would decrease his convoluted sentence length by an average of two-thirds. His writing style does not leave one with the impression that he has taken many writing seminars; (from what literary institution does he hail! ) Whereas a skilled writer draws one into his prose, a clumsy one deters his reader.

Someome had to capture the history of the tornado that took 94 lives in 84 mnutes. I agree it helps if you know the area, but it's written in a way that is reminiscent of any closely knit town.

This book was totally uninteresting to anyone trying to learn anything factual about the tornado. Personal accounts are interesting, but there are too many of them. This book is for you if you are a survivor of the tornado and can't remember anything about it. My mother and grandmother are survivors and both found it lacking.