the earthquake and tsunami, and below, the plant
after the disaster
Before
After
E
ven years after the earthquake and tsunami, the nuclear
disaster continues in and around the Fukushima Daiichi
power plant. The power plant was damaged so badly that
dangerous radioactive particles were released into the air. Even
small amounts of these particles are dangerous for people and
animals. Large amounts are deadly. People living within 12.5
miles of the plant had to flee their towns.
Radioactive particles cannot simply be cleaned up. They
remain dangerous for decades — or longer. Dozens of towns
all around the plant are ghost towns. Homes and shops are
abandoned. Streets are empty.
Radioactive water continues to pour out of the plant.
Forty-three hundred workers, wearing protective gear, are
working to clean up the plant. Experts predict it will take at
least thirty years. And even then, nobody can say if anyone will
be willing to live in this poisoned land.
Police officers undertake a search and
rescue mission after the tsunami.
T
he wave that hit Kamaishi
was more than a hundred
feet high. Imagine if it had been
one mile high. Sounds like
science fiction. But these
giant waves, known as
megatsunamis, are part of
Earth’s natural history. These
giant waves aren’t triggered by
earthquakes, like the Tohoku
tsunami. Rather, they are caused
by major volcanic eruptions,
landslides, or meteorites
splashing down into the ocean.
Scientists have evidence that
several of these megatsunamis
struck in prehistoric times. The
most incredible is believed to
have happened sixty-six million
years ago, on the Yucatán
Peninsula in Mexico. An
asteroid smashed into the ocean,
unleashing a towering tsunami
that traveled for hundreds of
miles.
EVEN SCARIER:
MEGATSUNAMI
A flooded street after the 2011 tsunami
#5
THE HENRYVILLE
TORNADO , 2012
Every week, I receive dozens of letters and e-mails
from readers of I Survived books, but never had I
gotten an e-mail like the one that appeared in my
in-box on April 29, 2012.
It was from three fifth-grade girls named
Shelby, Dayna, and Lyric. They were writing to
tell me about a massive tornado that had struck
their small town of Henryville, Indiana.
“We have so many stories to tell you about that
crazy day when the tornado destroyed our school
and our town,” they wrote. “We want you to write
our story, and we want to help you.”
Four days later, I flew to Louisville, Kentucky,
and then drove twenty miles north into the
beautiful green hills of southern Indiana. I met
Shelby, Lyric, and Dayna, along with dozens of
other students and teachers who survived the
tornado. What follows is their inspiring story. I
am honored to be a small part of it.
AN ORDINARY DAY
The morning of March 2, 2012, was a busy one
for the fifth-grade students in Mrs. Goodknight’s
class at Henryville Elementary School. There was
morning meeting, with poems to read, jokes to
share, and tests to prepare for. Students sang
“You’re a Grand Old Flag” using sign language,
then talked about Dr. Seuss, whose birthday was
being celebrated throughout the school.
“It was just an ordinary day,” said student Lyric
Darling, who was twelve at the time.
Except something extraordinary was happening
in the skies to the west of Henryville. Two masses
of air — one warm, one cold — had collided.
Normally the meeting of two extreme weather
fronts will cause a thunderstorm. But in rare
cases, thunderstorms explode into larger and
more savage storms known as supercells. These
immense storms can move more quickly than a
speeding car. With columns of swirling clouds
that rise into the atmosphere more than sixty
thousand feet — twice as high as Mount Everest —
supercells can unleash flooding rains, destructive
winds, and softball-size hailstones. Supercells can
also produce the most intensely powerful force in
nature: a tornado.
At noon, as Mrs. Goodknight’s students were
eating lunch, a line of supercells was racing
toward Henryville. By recess, while students
played basketball and practiced cartwheels under
a sunny sky, a huge tornado was forming fifty
miles away. It would soon close in on Henryville,
a friendly town of two thousand people, with
horse farms, businesses, and homes set amid
rolling green hills.
By the end of the school day, much of Henryville
would be shattered. And the lives of the seven
hundred students of Henryville Elementary
would be changed forever.
WHIRLWINDS AND TWISTERS
Tornadoes can — and do — strike anywhere on
earth except Antarctica. But 80 percent of the
world’s tornadoes happen in the United States,
many on the plains of the Midwest between Texas
and North Dakota. This region, nicknamed
Tornado Alley, provides a perfect environment for
the supercells that give birth to tornadoes. Cold,
dry air blasts east from the Rocky Mountains and
collides with moist, warm air traveling north
from the Gulf of Mexico. The fierce storms of the
plains have been terrorizing humans for centu-
ries. Native Americans told stories of whirlwinds
created by the Thunderbird, a powerful god
who created swirling winds by flapping his
gigantic wings. American pioneers wrote horrific
accounts of twisters that killed people, destroyed
homes, and stripped feathers from chickens. Many
of these settlers fled the region after losing their
homes and barns to violent storms.
Henryville is hundreds of miles from Tornado
Alley. But powerful storms often sweep through
this region. Henryville students practice tornado
drills every year. Just a few weeks before March 2,
the threat of a tornado had forced students to
evacuate their classrooms and head to refuge
A tornado on the
American plains
areas. As they had practiced in their tornado
drills, Mrs. Goodknight’s students sat in an
interior hallway near the first-grade classrooms —
thought to be a safe spot — until the danger had
passed.
On March 2, the National Weather Service had
warned that severe storms were heading for the
Henryville region. “I heard on the news that there
would be high winds,” said Shelby Fluhr, who
was eleven at the time.
Dayn
a Wilson, also eleven in 2012, had heard
the warning, too, before she went to school.
But Dayna, like most students, forgot about the
weather as she enjoyed her busy day. “There are
always warnings, but nothing bad ever happens.”
DEVASTATING HIT
Around 2:25 that afternoon, less than a half hour
before school was supposed to let out at Henryville
Elementary, a massive tornado touched down in
the town of Fredericksburg, forty miles away.
As word spread, panicked parents rushed to the
school. Many people assumed that the school’s
principal, Dr. Glenn Riggs, would keep the
students at school and have them hunker down
with their teachers in the interior hallways and
other refuge areas. Instead, Dr. Riggs decided
that the children would be safer at home. He
announced that all students were being dismissed
immediately. Teachers hurried to get students
onto buses or into waiting cars.
By two forty-five the skies were darkening.
The air felt strange, “both hot and cold,” Dayna
remembered. Bus drivers raced through their
routes.
“I was crying,” said Lyric. “All around me, kids
were crying.”
As students arrived home, families rushed for
shelter, grabbing pets and blankets and flashlights
and other supplies. Shelby went into the storm
shelter under the porch at her mother’s house,
cramming into the small, hot room with ten other
people. Dayna’s mother wasn’t home, so she got
off the bus with a friend, whose mother hurried
them into the basement of a nearby church. Lyric
and her mother went to a firehouse.
Meanwhile, the tornado was ripping a path of
destruction toward Henryville. It devoured a
forest, turning trees into splinters. It demolished
a sturdy factory, sweeping it off its foundation
and sucking much of the building into the sky. It
smashed houses, snapped telephone poles, and
pulled chunks of asphalt off the highway.
Two buses returned to the school with students
whose parents had not been home. Staff members
brought them to the office, where they all took
cover under desks. Teachers followed the track
of the tornado using their cell phones. But suddenly
the power went out. The phones died.
“It got very dark,” recalled Sally Riggs, the
school’s media specialist and wife of Dr. Riggs.
“We were all very quiet.”
And then the tornado slammed into the
The Henryville tornadoes destroyed Henryville
Elementary School and many other structures
in town.
school — a grinding funnel cloud a half mile wide,
filled with wood and trees and glass, swirling
furiously at 170 miles per hour. All around were
the sounds of shattering windows, crashing walls,
and objects slamming into the school. Teachers
held tight to students.
“The building sounded like it was coming
down around us,” said Mrs. Riggs. “I didn’t know
if we could survive.”
POUNDING FROM THE SKY
The tornado was over the school for less than
one minute. In that time, it almost completely
destroyed the school. The second floor collapsed.
Hallways crumbled and were filled with shards
of glass, splintered wood, and tiles. But miracu-
lously none of the students or teachers was injured.
Dr. Riggs led the group out of the office into a
scene of devastation. An overwhelming smell of
gas signaled the danger of an explosion. But
before the group could leave the building, sirens
began to blare and there was a new noise: “like
bowling balls were being thrown at us,” Mrs.
Riggs said.
A second tornado was upon them. It wasn’t
nearly as strong as the first. But it was packed
with enormous hailstones, which were now falling
like cannonballs shot from the sky. They crashed
through windows, windshields, and walls. When
this latest attack from the sky finally ended, the
dazed group made its way out of the building.
Hailstones
the size of
baseballs
fell during
the storm.
They found safety in the nearby community
center.
All around town, people emerged from cellars
and closets and bathrooms into a world of ruin —
land swept clean of buildings and trees, homes
flattened, cars smashed. The roof of the high
school had been torn off, the school destroyed.
A school bus had been picked up and thrown
through the school’s front windows.
Over the next few hours, parents arrived,
overjoyed to find their children. The community
braced itself for tragic news. Word came that one
man had died. Many lost their homes and
Vehicles were
thrown into
buildings all
across town.
businesses. But by the next day, it was clear: All of
Henryville’s children were safe.
It was almost two months after the tornado
when Dayna, Lyric, and Shelby invited me to
Firefighters walk
through Henryville
Middle School after
the tornadoes.
Henryville. I went
to their temporary
school, housed in a
cheerful and roomy
church building south
of Henryville.
I met Mrs. Good-
knight and Dr. and
Mrs. Riggs, and I
spoke to dozens of
students about their
experiences on March
2, 2012.
There were so
many sad and fright-
ening stories. Some
students saw the
tornado. Many were
separated from their
parents. Some students
The kids and teachers
of Henryville
Elementary
Jacob, Austin, Eli,
and Wyatt
Emma, Erin, Sydney,
and Olivia
Principal
Glenn Riggs
Morgan, Jack, Collin (front),
Emily, and Timmy
in Mrs. Goodknight’s
class lost their homes.
A few children cried
after they’d told their
stories. But there were
also some laughs, like
when Erin told how
she had found her
guinea pig, alive and
well, in the wreckage
of her home, or when
Lyric described the
hailstone that’s still
in her freezer. Many
told how the commu-
nity came together to
help and support one
another. “You learn
what’s important,” Mrs.
Goodknight said.
Malachy, Blaine,
Aden, and Joshua
Les, Mrs. Riggs, Trenton,
and Shelby
MaKaila, Mrs. Goodknight,
Jo
shua, and Dillon
Jeremiah, Isaiah (front),
Noah, MaKaila, and Haylee
Each of the seven hundred children of
Henryville Elementary has his or her story, and
each is unique and unforgettable.
But every one of their stories ends the same
way: with the incredible fact that they all survived.
Mindy Nye looks through the rubble after
the Henryville tornado.
THE
TORNADO
FILES
Two years after the tornado, I spoke to Mrs.
Riggs, Shelby, and Lyric (Dayna had moved
away). They called me from the beautiful
library of their rebuilt school. What did living
through the Henryville tornado teach them?
“We’re blessed,” Mrs. Riggs said. “People
from all over the world helped us.”
Shelby, Collin, Lyric, and Mrs. Riggs,
April, 2014
THE 5 DEADLIEST
TORNADOES IN US
HISTORY
The Tri-State Tornado,
March 18, 1925
AFFECTED AREAS: A single tornado left a 215- mile-long path
of destruction through Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. The
tornado moved at speeds of more than 60 miles per hour, as
fast as a modern car on the highway. In four
hours, many communities were flattened.
DEATHS:
695
1
Natchez,
Mississippi,
May 6, 1840
AFFECTED AREAS: The massive tornado, one mile wide,
ripped along the Mississippi River, destroying boats and towns
along the shore.
DEATHS:
317
2
Over the centuries, twisters have left a
tragic path of destruction.
WINDS
can reach
up to 300
miles per
hour.
AFFECTED AREAS: More than one thousand homes and other
buildings were destroyed by a mile-wide tornado, with winds
whirling at 200 miles per hour. Entire neighborhoods were
swept away.
DEATHS: 158
5
Joplin, Missouri,
I Survived True Stories: Five Epic Disasters Page 6