Spring storms

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Every tornado seems like a totally unique event to a community. The pictures and film clips from the 1936 storm are eerily familiar.

The 1936 Gainesville Tornado: Disaster and Recovery provides online access to a historical film depicting the extensive damage from the severe multi-funnel tornado strike that devastated Gainesville, Georgia, on April 6, 1936. The thirty-two-and-a-half minute film, probably shot for insurance purposes, focuses on the devastation of the commercial and governmental center of Gainesville, but also includes footage of damage to nearby residential areas.
 In particular, it features the damage to the public square, the county courthouse, the Georgia Power Company, the Cooper Pants Factory, and the First Methodist Church. The 1936 Gainesville tornado (part of a massive tornado outbreak across the Deep South that also heavily damaged Tupelo, Mississippi) is generally regarded as the fifth deadliest in U.S. history. Extensive recovery efforts involving many local, regional, state, and national resources eventually rebuilt Gainesville, culminating in the 1938 dedication of the new city hall and county courthouse by President Franklin Roosevelt.

The site provides an introductory essay, as well as a multi-media exhibition on the tornado and the extensive recovery effort afterwards. An interactive map offers geographically-based access to selected film clips for which shooting locations have been identified. The site also includes links to related images in Vanishing Georgia and the Hall County Library System Historical Photograph Collection.

The interactive map is very easy to use. It is more for the stranger looking at the devastation, than for a person who had kin in the area. There is no search box. You can't look for a particular person (I didn't see any names listed) nor a particular business (though businesses are tagged in some photos). The pictures are in black and white which lends a seriousness to the display.
The The 1936 Gainesville Tornado: Disaster and Recovery is part of the Digital Library of Georgia. The site is available through GALILEO by selecting Databases A-Z, selecting all databases, it's at the top of the list, 1936 Gainesville Tornado


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Current CTC students may get off campus access information by opening My Acount after logging into Find Books.