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I Survived True Stories: Five Epic Disasters

Page 6

by Lauren Tarshis


  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,

 

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