I Survived True Stories: Five Epic Disasters Read online

  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

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  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