March 15, 1938, started out a beautiful, sunny day in Belleville, Dolores Bieser remembers.
She was 24 at the time and was with her mother at her parents' house at 2910 W. Main in Belleville when the worst tornado in the town's history touched down. It was 4:54 p.m.
"The sky darkened," Bieser said. "We looked out and we saw a funnel in the back of our house."
The tornado lasted about four seconds, she said.
"Nature, Infuriated and Enraged Showed Neither Sympathy Nor Mercy for Those in Its Path," read the editorial in the Belleville Daily News-Democrat the following day.
The storm killed 10 people, including Bieser's father, and injured hundreds in Belleville and the outlying area when the tornado struck 61 years ago. There was more than $1 million in damage and 200 homes were ruined.
That tornado was rated a category F4 tornado. It was 300 yards wide and covered 12 miles, said St. Louis University meteorologist Ben Abell. The winds carried a piece of plate glass from a gas station 25 miles, he said. The tornado that ravaged Oklahoma City this year was an F5.
Another fierce F4 tornado struck the metro-east February 25, 1956. Six people were killed in two tornadoes that touched down that evening. There was $1 million in damage.
A few tornadoes storm through the St. Louis metropolitan every year but severe tornadoes are few and far between, Abell said.
Paul M. Haas, 80, was 20 when the tornado ravaged Belleville in 1938.
"I was standing in my parents' yard and they lived on the corner of Ninth and Main. I heard all this racket," he said.
He could see the tail of the tornado. "I could see it moving. I could see it going over the northwest area."
"You could see things flying in the air," he said. "Within a couple seconds you could hear the ambulances going."
"Dipping downward the cone-shaped death-dealing twister" destroyed Union School and completely swept away Hargrave's Tavern, the newspaper reported.
The tavern was "lifted from its foundation and swept across Main Street."
Bieser's father Joseph Roesch went to Thomas Hargrave's Tavern to warn them the storm was coming and they should get down, she said.
He was on his way home from work as president of Roesch Enamel Range Company behind Belleville Township High School. Back then March 15 was tax day and Roesch was helping people fill out their forms. Roesch's car was found on the roof of a filling station. His body was found a couple blocks away.
"Dad was the person if anyone needed help he would help," she said. "He loved people."
Tavern owner Tom Hargrave narrowly escaped death after he went home to get cigarettes, according to the paper. While he was gone the tornado struck.
The tornado demolished Union School, which was at 2634 W. Main Street.
Some people in town didn't know there had been a tornado. It seemed like the tornado would hit something big and then skip to another street, Bieser said.
"It destroyed about three homes on Main Street, then went around the corner of 30th street and took off our porch," she said.
Traffic was terrible after the tornado because there weren't many roads, Bieser said.
After the tornado Belleville had "the mightiest influx of automobiles in Belleville history" to view the destruction, the paper reported. Fifteen hundred out-of-town cars came through the city over the weekend.
Guards watched the neighborhoods to make sure looters didn't take anything, Bieser said.
Bieser remembers the day clearly.
"You'd never forget it," she said. "You realize there must be a God because only he could create something so powerful.
"It really is something to see, but I wouldn't want to see it again."
