Eight Icarian Masons Miraculously Escaped Crushing by Falling Temple Walls

During a severe tornado in Nauvoo on May 27, 1850, eight Icarian masons were working inside the temple. As they took shelter against the south wall, the north wall collapsed with a horrific crash. Although the men believed they were certainly lost, they were spared as the massive rocks fell at their feet without striking them. They subsequently managed to flee the building safely through dust and debris before the remaining walls fell.

Fuller account of this event (in the witness’s own words):

They had scarce entered the shelter they had chosen as the nearest, when in the middle of the claps of thunder, a whirl of wind, rain and hail, rushed with impetuosity against the north side of the edifice with overwhelming force; it detaches the materials, shakes, moves that mighty mass of stone, the height of which furnish so much hold to his efforts, and the resistance of which has nothing but to augment its strength and fury; and our brothers, sheltering against the south wall, see the north face yielding under the powerful pressure of the tempest, tremble and incline before them. “Friends, we are lost!” exclaimed one of them, and at the same moment the immense wall ran down under their eyes with a horrid crash !! However, by a sort of miracle, those eight men, who thought themselves certain to be all crushed, saw enormous rocks falling at their feet without being struck by them.