(May 11, 2008)—Multi-million dollar development projects are beginning to fill in what remains of the space that used to be Waco’s town square, a thriving area around City Hall that formed the heart of the downtown business district.
A simple monument and an historical marker serve as the only obvious reminders of the powerful tornado that struck 55 years ago Sunday, destroying hundreds of homes and businesses and transforming Waco’s vibrant town square into a wasteland of twisted rubble.
The tornado killed 114 people and nearly 600 others injured, 140 of them seriously.
It remains one of the deadliest storms in Texas history and it struck without warning near the end of what had been an unremarkable workday.
The tornado touched down just after 4 p.m. near Lorena and moved north-northeast toward Waco.
It was about a third-of-a-mile wide when in struck downtown, but its approach was masked by heavy rainfall.
It left a path 23-mile path of damage stretching to near Axtell before it dissipated.
Thirty people died in the collapse of the six-story R. T. Dennis building.
Five were killed in their cars.
Some survivors were trapped in the rubble for as long as 14 hours and some bodies weren’t recovered for days after the tornado struck.
City Hall survived, but most of the rest of the buildings around it did not.
The tornado destroyed more than 200 homes and businesses and so heavily damaged 400 others that they were eventually torn down.
Another thousand structures were damaged.
More than 2,000 vehicles were destroyed.
The damage in current dollars totaled more than $300 million.
In the decades since the deadly disaster, new buildings including the Waco Convention Center filled the space, and today, work is underway or about to get underway on millions of dollars worth of projects including the new headquarters of the Waco Chamber of Commerce, a $60 million 17-acre development between South 3rd and South 4th Streets, and a $15 million renovation of the Roosevelt Hotel, which will serve as an office building.
The Waco Hilton is getting a $16 million facelift and taxpayers approved a bond issue in 2007 that will pay for $17.5 million in renovations to the Waco Convention Center.
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