by Lauren
Tarshis
FIve epIC dISaSTerS
TSUNAMI
• TITANIC
• BLIZZARD
• TORNADO
preSS
• FLOOD
Five ePiC Disasters
THE SINKING OF THE
TITANIC
, 1912
THE SHARK ATTACKS OF 1916
HURRICANE KATRINA, 2005
THE BOMBING OF PEARL HARBOR, 1941
THE SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE, 1906
THE ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG, 1863
THE JAPANESE TSUNAMI, 2011
THE NAZI INVASION, 1944
THE DESTRUCTION OF POMPEII, AD 79
ALSO BY LAUREN TARSHIS
Five ePiC Disasters
by Lauren Tarshis
ScholaStic PreSS / New York
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled,
reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and
retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now
known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions
Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
e-ISBN 978-0-545-78974-5
Text copyright © 2014 by Lauren Tarshis
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc.,
Publishers since 1920. scholastic,scholastic press, and associated logos are
trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data available.
First printing, October 2014
Designed by Deborah Dinger, Yaffa Jaskoll, and Jeannine Riske
To all of you amazing readers, who
make writing such a joy.
Contents
viii AUTHOR’S NOTE
1
1: THE CHILDREN’S BLIZZARD,
1888
31
2: THE
TITANIC
DISASTER, 1912
63
3: THE GREAT BOSTON MOLASSES
FLOOD, 1919
91
4: THE JAPANESE TSUNAMI, 2011
119
5: THE HENRYVILLE TORNADO, 2012
145 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
146 MY SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
151 PHOTO CREDITS
166 ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Dear Readers,
Over the past few years, I’ve received thousands
of notes and e-mails from you, asking amazing
questions — about writing, about research, about
my family, and of course about my dog. But one
of the most common questions has been: What
was the inspiration for the I Survived series?
The answer is in this book.
When I’m not writing the I Survived books, I’m
doing my job as editor of the Scholastic magazine
Storyworks, which is read by more than 700,000
kids in their classrooms. The heart of every issue
of Storyworks is a thrilling nonfiction article, and
over the years I have written dozens and dozens
of these articles myself. There are fascinating true
stories about a huge range of subjects — incredible
journeys and heroic people, death-defying rescues
and real-life monsters, amazing inventions and
shocking discoveries.
And, of course, I’ve written about disasters —
tornadoes and shipwrecks and hurricanes and
volcanoes and earthquakes and even a flood of
molasses that filled the streets of Boston. I’ve
written so many disaster stories for Storyworks
that one friend nicknamed me “the disaster
queen.” I decided that was a compliment!
It was while writing these stories that I had the
idea for the I Survived series. But it’s not really
the disasters themselves that captivate me. Sure,
it’s interesting to read about spewing lava and
wild waves and winds whirling at 200 miles per
hour. But what really fascinates me are the people
in these stories — ordinary people who behave in
heroic ways, who endure terrible events and go
on to live happy lives. It’s this human quality —
resilience — that inspires me, and is at the heart
of each of the I Survived books.
The stories you’re about to read have appeared
in Storyworks in recent years, though I’ve expanded
them for this collection and added new facts and
interesting tidbits. Though the I Survived books
are historical fiction, I think you’ll see many simi-
larities between those books and the nonfiction
articles that follow.
Thank you all for making me a part of your
reading journey!
#1
THE CHILDREN’S
BLIZZARD, 1888
January 12, 1888, dawned bright and sunny in
Groton, Dakota Territory, a tiny town on America’s
enormous wind-swept prairie. For the first time
in weeks, eight-year-old Walter Allen didn’t feel
like he was going to freeze to death just by waking
up. He kicked off his quilt and hopped out of
bed with hardly a shiver. Within minutes he had
thrown on his clothes, wolfed down his porridge,
and kissed his mom good-bye. With a happy
wave, he hurried off to school, a four-room
schoolhouse about a half mile from his home.
All across Dakota Territory and Nebraska that
morning, thousands of children like Walter headed
to school with quicker steps than usual. For weeks
they’d been trapped in their homes by
dangerously cold weather. In some areas, the
temperature had plunged to 40 degrees below zero.
It was cold enough to freeze a person’s eyes shut and
turn their fingers blue and their toes to ice. Schools
all through the region had been closed. Parents kept
their kids inside, huddled close to stoves.
At least Walter’s family lived in a proper house,
on Main Street. His dad, W. C., was a lawyer and
a successful businessman. But most of the people
living on this northern stretch of prairie were
brand-new settlers. They had come from Europe,
mainly Sweden, Norway, and Germany. The
majority were very poor and struggling to survive
in this punishing land. Without money to buy a
house or building supplies, thousands lived in
bleak sod houses, tiny dwellings built from bricks
of hardened soil. Life in a cramped, smoky “soddy”
was never easy. Being trapped inside for weeks was
torture.
What a relief it was to be back at school! It was
still cold outside, only about 20 degrees. But after
the weeks of frozen weather, the
air felt almost
springlike. Many kids left home without their
warm wool coats and sturdy boots. Walter wore
just his trousers and woolen shirt. Girls wore their
cotton dresses and leather shoes, their braids
swinging merrily from their hatless heads. As
children arrived at Walter’s school, some stood
outside on the steps. They admired the unusual
color of the sky — golden, with just a thin veil of
clouds. “Like a fairy tale,” one of them said.
AN ARCTIC BLAST
But not everyone was smiling at the surprisingly
warm weather and the glowing sky. Some people
had learned the hard way that they should never
trust the weather on America’s northern prairie,
especially in the winter. Wasn’t there something
spooky about the color of the sky? Wasn’t it odd
that the temperature had jumped more than forty
degrees overnight? A Dakota farmer named John
Buchmillar thought so. He told his twelve-year-
old daughter, Josephine, that she’d be staying put
that day. “There’s something in the air,” he said to
her with a worried glance at the sky.
There was indeed something in the air, and
it was headed directly toward America’s vast
midsection. High up in the sky, three separate
weather systems — masses of air of different
temperatures — were about to crash together.
The warm air that had delighted the school-
children that morning would soon smash into a
sheet of freezing Arctic air speeding down from
Canada. Most dangerous of all was a low-pressure
system — a spinning mess of unstable air churning
its way across the continent from the northeast.
The meeting of these three weather systems would
soon create a monstrous blizzard, a frozen white
hurricane of terrifying violence.
But Walter Allen and his classmates had no
idea what was brewing above them in the endless
prairie sky. Not even the experts knew what was
coming. First Lieutenant Thomas Woodruff,
trained in the brand-new science of weather
forecasting, was working at his office in Saint
Paul, Minnesota. It was Woodruff’s job to gather
In a true blizzard, so much snow fills the air
that it can be impossible to see.
information about the weather, including the
temperature and wind speeds, in surrounding
areas. Using this information, Woodruff would
try to predict what weather was heading down to
the area around Groton.
At 3:00 p.m. the day before, Woodruff had
sent out his prediction for the following day.
His forecast would be printed in small-town
newspapers.
“For Minnesota and Dakota: Slightly warmer
fair weather, light to fresh variable winds.”
AN EXPLOSION
All morning Walter Allen sat at his desk working
on his arithmetic problems. His teacher walked
through the room offering help, her skirt swishing
and her boots clicking against the wooden floor.
The children worked on their small rectangular
chalkboards, which were called writing slates.
After finishing each set of problems, Walter took
a tiny glass perfume bottle from his desk, removed
the jewel-like lid, and
poured a drop of water
onto the hard surface of
his slate. The bottle was
Walter’s prized possession.
All of the other children kept small
bottles of water and rags at their desks to wipe
their slates clean. But Walter’s bottle was special,
a treasure that seemed to be plucked from a
pirate’s chest.
He was just finishing his problems when a
roaring sound overtook the school. The walls
began to shake, the door rattled, and some of the
younger children began to cry. Walter rushed to
the window and was stunned by what he saw.
“It was like day had turned to night,” one
farmer later wrote in his journal. From out of
nowhere, sheets of snow and ice pounded the
school.
Fortunately the men of the small, tight-knit
town of Groton mobilized quickly when the
storm hit. As the teachers gathered the children
in front of the school, they were relieved to
discover that five enormous horse-drawn sleds
were already there, ready to take everyone home.
The teachers kept careful track of every child
who climbed onto a sled, checking off names in
their attendance books. When every child was
accounted for, the sleds began to move.
SWALLOWED BY DARKNESS
Walter’s sled was creeping slowly away from the
school when he remembered his perfume bottle.
He knew the delicate glass would never survive in
such cold temperatures: The water inside would
freeze, and the bottle would shatter.
Nobody saw Walter Allen as he jumped down
from the sled and hurried back into the school. It
took him just a few seconds to grab his bottle,
stuff it into his pocket, and rush back outside.
But the sleds had vanished — swallowed by
the sudden darkness. Walter tried to run into the
street, but the wind spun him and knocked him
over. He stood up, took two steps, and the wind
swatted him down again. Up and down, up
and down.
Meanwhile, snow and ice swarmed around
Walter’s body like attacking bees. Snow blew up
his nose, into his eyes, and down the collar of his
shirt. His face became encrusted in ice, and
his eyes were soon sealed shut by his frozen tears.
He managed to stand one final time, desperate
now. But he was no match for this monstrous
storm. Once more the wind slammed Walter
down. This time he could not stand up, so he
curled himself into a ball, too exhausted to move.
He realized that nobody knew that he wasn’t
on the sleds, huddled among classmates, heading
for home. It was as though he had tumbled
off Earth and into space — a frozen, swirling
darkness.
THE LONG WINTER
Brutal winters were always a part of life on
America’s northern plains. Native American
tribes first settled the area 1,500 years ago, hunting
buffalo across the flat, grassy plains. But most
tribes migrated south for the winters, returning
after the worst of the snows had passed.
Few of the white settlers who came to the plains
were prepared for the hardships and loneliness of
life on the prairie. Many were driven away — or
A young steer
after a blizzard
killed —by the deadly winters. “There was
nothing in the world but cold and dark and
work . .. and winds blowing,” remembers Laura
Ingalls Wilder in her book The Long Winter. The
book, part of the famous Little House series,
describes the Ingalls family’s terrifying experiences
in the Dakota Territory during
the snowy winter
of 1880–81. At one point, trains carrying food and
coal were stranded due to snowdrifts. The family
and others in the town nearly starved.
But the storm of 1888 was different from
even the most brutal prairie blizzards. It hit so
suddenly — a gigantic wave of wind, ice, and snow
that crashed over the prairie without warning. As
Walter Allen lay freezing on the ground in Groton,
thousands of other children across the Great Plains
were also caught in the storm.
Some teachers had kept their children at school,
gathering them together in front of wood-burning
stoves, calming the young ones with stories and
songs. Minnie Freeman, a seventeen-year-old
teacher in Mira Valley, Nebraska, hoped to keep
her sixteen students safe in their tiny
schoolhouse. But within an hour, the winds had
ripped a hole in the roof, and Minnie knew they
would all freeze unless they found shelter. She
tied the children together with a rope and led
them through the storm, sometimes crawling
along the ground to escape the winds. Somehow
they made it to the boardinghouse where Minnie
lived — cold but alive.
RESCUE MISSION
There were other lucky children that day, saved
by quick-thinking teachers or, more often, small
miracles. There were the Graber boys, who were
lost on the prairie until they glimpsed a familiar
tree, enabling them to find their bearings and get
to their home. There was eleven-year-old Stephan
Ulrich, who was lost, freezing, and nearly blind
when he crashed into the side of a barn. Feeling
his way to the entrance, he went inside and spent
the night curled up next to a hog, whose warmth
protected him from the cold.
When Walter Allen’s father, W. C., discovered
that his youngest son hadn’t come home, he and
four other men headed back to the school, risking
their lives. At the last moment, they allowed
I Survived True Stories: Five Epic Disasters Page 1