General
The clock on the sign for the First National Bank of Pell City was stopped at the time the twister struck: 4:11 p.m. It was one of 13 tornadoes to strike Alabama on Jan. 10, 1975. Afterward, so many people crowded into the St. Clair County hospital that the local National Guard Armory was used as a medical annex, according to a Jan. 11 article in the Birmingham Post-Herald.
The fiercest of the storms that day followed a 19-mile path from Pell City to Ragland, injuring dozens of people living in a mobile home park and killing one man at a service station.
The tornado that hit Pell City and Ragland was later ranked as an EF-3, with winds up to 165 mph.
The other tornadoes were less powerful and ranked lower, with three listed as EF-2 on the Fujita scale and nine ranked EF-1, according to the National Weather Service. As storms pummeled Alabama, tornadoes also struck Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida, killing at least 13 people nationwide.
Tornado watches were issued for 63 of Alabama’s 67 counties that day. The National Weather Service said tornadoes touched down in these counties: Tuscaloosa, Mobile, Marengo, Jefferson, Shelby, St. Clair, Baldwin, Montgomery, Macon, Lee and Cleburne.
The outbreak occurred just nine months after 87 Alabamians died in the Super Outbreak of April 3, 1974 – the second most devasting tornadic event in recorded Alabama history. People were wary. They knew to heed the warnings.
50th commemoration to be held
The Pell City Historical Society has planned an event to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the storm. It will be held Friday, Jan. 10, 2025, at The Venue on 20th Street in Pell City. Renowned Alabama meteorologist James Spann will give a presentation on the damage done that day. Find more information here.
In addition, the Pell City Museum will host an exhibit called “In the Path of Destruction.” It begins Jan. 10.
‘A hundred freight trains running over my house’
The morning of Jan. 10 began with news of a terrible blizzard buffeting Midwestern states – one that would eventually kill more than 30 people – yet forecasts in Birmingham posted an unseasonably warm high of 67 degrees.
Severe weather began at 2 p.m. when the first twister, an EF-1, touched down in western Jefferson County, according to the Birmingham Post-Herald article. Throughout that day and evening, smaller tornadoes struck cities across central and south Alabama.
Pell City’s EF-3 tornado struck with vengeance.
“One man, who said his family survived by taking shelter in a closet, said the tornado sounded ‘like a hundred freight trains running over my house,’” The Birmingham Post-Herald reported.
It hit not long after 4 p.m., a time that may have led to less loss of life, according to an editorial in the St. News Aegis. “It could have been the time of day. It could have been because a lot of the younger people who live in mobile homes both work and had their children in kindergarten. It could have been because it was just about the time most people were not in those 250-odd homes that were seriously or totally demolished.” Meteorologist Robert M. Ferry added that “there were no injuries in the trailer park because residents had taken shelter in a nearby brick building.”
Still, the devastated town of Pell City – located 34 miles east of Birmingham and home to about 6,000 residents at the time – would need time to recover. “There was a terrific amount of damage for such a small area,” C.J. Sullivan, then Civil Defense director, told the Birmingham Post-Herald.
Damage in Pell City totaled $5 million (about $30 million today), according to the 1990 book “Significant Tornadoes: A Chronology of Events,” by T.P. Grazulis. The destruction included 49 homes destroyed, 259 homes damaged, 15 mobile homes destroyed and 27 business damaged.
In the nearby community of Ragland, $2 million in damages were reported, including five homes destroyed and 48 homes damaged, Grazulis wrote.
At the mobile home park, nearly all the trailers were leveled. A rescue worker was quoted in The Anniston Star the next day as saying of Smith Trailer Park: “It’s just not there anymore.”
St. Clair County hospital overflowed. “The town’s hospital became so crowded with injured persons some had to be sent to a nearby National Guard armory for treatment,” the article said, “and the National Guard unit was mobilized after reports of looting in the downtown section.”
‘Never the same again’
The man killed in Ragland was working at Perry’s Standard Service, which was constructed using concrete blocks, the National Weather Service reported. The building, owned by James Perry, collapsed on top of Ross Phillips Jr., who was 49 years old and the father of nine children. He is buried in Macedonia Baptist Church Cemetery in Ragland.
Newspapers initially said two people had died in the tornado. The Post-Herald later reported that one death occurred before the storm, saying Willie Holsemback of Helena was pronounced dead at the scene of a car crash just seconds before the tornado struck. The Associated Press, however, reported that the traffic accident was caused by the twister.
In her 2001 book “Through the Storm,” Glenda Emigh wrote that residents “…mark time as either before or after the tornado because the town was never the same again.”
Places heavily damaged or destroyed included the St. Clair County Courthouse in Pell City, Pell City City Hall, Ragland High School, a shopping center on U.S. Highway 231, three churches and Duran Junior High.
Then-Gov. George Wallace asked President Gerald Ford to declare 10 Alabama counties as disaster areas to receive federal aid, The Anniston Star reported on Jan. 26, 1975.
In the weeks that followed, residents showed their resilience and Pell City was rebuilt. At Perry’s Standard Service, the owner erected a sign in the wake of the storm: “It’s good to be alive,” it read.
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