Flint .... Beecher, Michigan Tornado Photograph Album, June, 1953

THOMAS DE DOMINCES

Publication: Privately photographed & assembled, 1953, Flint / Beecher

First edition. 10 5/8" x 9 1/2" pebbled black cloth 20-ring Kodak C-1 binder with two fastening snaps at fore-edge, 19 unpaginated pages, double-sided polyester transparent, protective, sleeves, with black paper backing inserts that protects and preserves thirty-seven 8" x 10" photographs and with an additional eleven 4" x 4" smaller photographs tucked into the last protective leaf. Flint - Beecher, Michigan Tornado photograph album containing 44 original photographs portraying the utter devastation to Beecher, Michigan on the outskirts of Flint, by one of the deadliest tornadoes in U.S. history which struck on Monday, June 8, 1953. It was rated as an F5 on the Fujita scale. At 8:30 p.m. with very little advance warning, except for some thunderstorms, the tornado touched down in Genesee County, Michigan, carving a 27 mile path causing 116 fatalities and millions of dollars in damage. While most of the tornado’s path went through rural farmland, most of the devastation was concentrated in the small community of Beecher, a suburb on the northern edge of the city of Flint, Michigan. Of the 116 fatalities, 113 of them occurred in Beecher. The photo album provides an incisive series of images vividly presenting the catastrophic results of the F5 tornado which leveled Beecher, Michigan, in June, 1953. The tornado touched down at 8:30 p.m. near Webster and Coldwater Roads and cut a path nearly a mile wide at 35 mph through Beecher, leveling everything in its path including the Beecher High School,and causing panic and devastation to movie-goers desperately trying to leave the North Flint Drive-In Theater evacuating directly into the path of the tornado. The album begins with an image of the rubble of the home of Thomas and Jean DeDominces with a sign stating "We went through it. Guess we will return." The photos show houses razed to the ground, twisted timbers, debris fields stretching for miles, cars so damaged and torqued by the wind, they are nearly impossible to identify, wounded survivors surveying the devastation, twisted steel I-beams, houses imploded into their basements, homes where literally half of the building has been sheered away leaving the other half standing, and much more. Nearly every home in the Coldwater Road corridor between Clio Road and Dort highway was destroyed, large sections of neighborhoods were completely blown away, leaving only the buildings' foundations, huge trees were debarked or ripped from the ground, and vehicles were thrown and mangled. In all, 340 homes were destroyed, 260 homes were damaged, and 66 farm and commercial buildings were destroyed. This tornado remains the single deadliest tornado in Michigan history, and the deadliest in modern US history until the 2011 Joplin, Missouri tornado. See: The Flint News-Advertiser, June 9-Sept 1, 1953. Contemporary typed label affixed to the spine and hand-written label on front flap, minor rubbing to the binder's edges, some minor bumps to the corners, light wear to the spine ends and spine panel of folding snap section, else contents are fine and well-preserved and protected. Overall a very good presentation of an important series of photographs.