“Estes! C’mere! Look at this!” he cried.
Estes did not come.
The bus storage barn owned by the Topeka Transportation Company was a block west of the barbershop. The company’s warehouse-like shop stretched more than 200 feet down Jackson Street. Fifty green-and-white city buses and 20 or so yellow school buses were parked in the building or on the adjacent lot. Benge watched the wind grab the barn’s enormous flat roof, lift it more or less intact, and then flip it off to the northeast like a giant Frisbee. After that, the buses started to move — first sliding into each other like a herd of restless cattle, then tipping over and rolling like hay bales, and finally tumbling end-over-end, into each other and into the building.
Man, this is not going to be good . . .
He dashed for the basement.
“Get down! It’s here!”
Benge dove for the floor, and the men squeezed against the wall and pulled the mattresses tighter over their heads. Then the power failed and the room went pitch black and the whooshing roar of dozens of aircraft was right overhead. Estes could hear the building collapsing.
We’re dead men.
He thought of his wife and children.
Unlike so many others across the city, Pete Jackson never heard the tornado coming. No more than two or three minutes had passed since he’d gone to ground in the cubbyhole behind the snack bar at the Pla-Land bowling alley. He was squeezing himself tighter against the wall when darkness descended and the room exploded. The building began to disintegrate. The combination of the tornado’s growl and the atmospheric pressure made it feel as though his head was caught in a vise and was about to explode. His ears popped hard several times. His eyes were closed, but he could feel objects swirling around and striking him and he could hear the lumber cracking and ripping. It was as if the entire bowling alley had been thrown into a giant blender.
I’m going to die and there’s nothing I can do about it. What a place to die in. What a way to go. And at my young age.
Tim Lyle and Dick Brumme were still watching from the 10th floor of the Santa Fe building. But by now, they were immobilized as much by fear as fascination. The tornado had quickly closed the last quarter mile and no longer was distinct. Instead, the sky itself appeared to have merged with the ground, and grayish air swirled and boiled as pieces of wreckage raced and skipped across the green grass of the capitol grounds. A portion of the state printing building, a block south on 10th Street, suddenly seemed to liquefy and shoot upward in a graceful, spiraling arc of paper and bricks. Then the lights in the Santa Fe building flickered and failed. The windows on the south and west sides of the 10th floor exploded outward. Papers from office desks hurtled into the void like a flock of panicky birds. The tornado’s roar was crushing.
“Get to the stairwell!”
The men dashed for the stairs and slammed the door behind them, then fell to their knees and braced for impact. But only silence ensued. Cautiously, Lyle stood up and peeked out the door. A huge cottonwood was floating just outside the windows to the west. The tree was fully intact and horizontal, so close you could almost touch its rough bark and leafy branches. Lyle watched as the giant drifted slowly north on a mighty river of air, 100 feet off Jackson Street.
Untethered at last.
Operator Laura Dalrymple didn’t have much time to ponder the curious spectacle she’d just witnessed in the Southwestern Bell building.
What on Earth was that woman talking about? What did she mean, ‘It’s coming!’?
Dalrymple put her headphones on and once again was trying to make sense of her malfunctioning switchboard when suddenly the interior, windowless room grew very hot, as though the furnace was blasting right beside her. She heard screams. Then she felt a sensation that went well beyond the realm of normal human experience. The pressure change from the tornado was fully upon her, and her body started to move in an involuntary, swaying S-motion. She instantly perceived the movement at a molecular level, as if some kind of wave was passing directly through her. And in that moment she realized — or was made to understand — that the human body really does consist of 90 percent water.
Four blocks north, two men stood at the corner of 5th and Van Buren streets and watched the monster approach. David Laird was a 19-year-old Washburn student studying criminal justice; Fred Eiesland was a plainclothes officer who managed a work-study program at police headquarters. The two had listened in the police radio room as Officer Hathaway called in the initial tornado sighting from Burnett’s Mound. They’d watched dispatcher Marc Hood key the warning sirens. After that, Eiesland had decided it would probably make sense to gas up his cruiser, given the undoubtedly long night ahead.
A deep, ominous rumble was building in the southwest as a jail trustee filled the car at the police pumps a block west of the station. Eiesland and Laird jogged out to Van Buren Street and craned their necks toward the sound. Van Buren offered an unobstructed view of the state capitol grounds three blocks south and the men could see the tornado now, looming beyond the statehouse. The capitol’s high green dome appeared naked and fatally exposed against the churning funnel behind it. The roar had become deafening.
Laird had never been so scared.
This could be the end of the world . . .
As if to underscore that possibility, the tornado whipped a fully intact, two-car garage from its inventory of circling debris and flung it hard against the southwest corner of the capitol dome, 250 feet above the ground, as a child might throw a dollhouse. The garage exploded. Then the wind gathered the fragments and drew them back into its spinning grasp.
The men shouted a warning to the trustee and dashed for the police station basement.
Dorothy Decker had walked most of the way up the 900 block of Kansas Avenue to meet her husband, Earl, after leaving the Coffee Cup Café. He’d pulled the car around to the corner of 9th and Kansas so Dorothy wouldn’t get her shoes wet while climbing in. She was standing at the curb and was just about to open the door when the winds arrived. The torrents grabbed her and threw her sideways into the quarter-inch plate glass window in the front of Karlan’s Furniture store. Then everything — broken glass, furniture and Dorothy — was sucked back out onto Kansas Avenue and lifted off to the south. She tried grabbing a parking meter as she flew past. But no human could match the tornado’s strength. So down Kansas Avenue Dorothy went, just another piece of debris, slamming into the pavement and bouncing back up and hitting again. And the whole time, every agonizing millisecond, she was awake and aware of each new cut and puncture from the countless shards of glass, metal and wood that stabbed at her in their frantic rush to meet the vortex.
Make it end, make it end, God, make it end!
Twenty-four-year-old Gary Fleenor had just finished going through the buffet line at the Pennant Cafeteria, a popular eatery on the second floor of a building just across Kansas Avenue. He was there with 30 or so other Jaycees for their monthly meeting. Fleenor found a seat near the big, plate glass windows that overlooked the avenue.
Then someone said, “Hey, look at all the birds!”
“Those aren’t birds! That’s paper!”
Then: “My God, it’s a tornado!”
Not 10 seconds later, the tall windows crashed outward and clattering dishes and silverware chased the broken glass into the street. The Jaycees hit the floor. Amid the chaos, Fleenor cautiously lifted his head to the windowsill and peered out. He could see the tornado a block south. It was dirty white and coiling like an enormous snake around the National Reserve Life Insurance building, a 10-story monolith that stood alone on the southeast corner of 10th and Kansas. The building shook violently as the tornado squeezed and seemed to tighten its grip, like an anaconda crushing a large mammal.
Fleenor ducked back to the floor.
Three blocks southeast on Quincy Street, 46-year-old Catherine Sommers crowded closer to her older sister in the dining room of their mother’s home. Mrs. Nell Dale was in her 70s. She was a widow and in
failing health. That’s why Catherine had come to check on her, leaving her two boys at home. That’s why her sister, Frances, was in town from Great Bend. That’s also why Nell’s bed had been moved down to the first floor of the big, two-story house, and why Catherine knew there would be no way of getting her mother to the basement after the sirens went off.
“What do the sirens mean, Catherine?” Frances asked nervously. “What are we to do?” Evidently, they didn’t have tornado sirens in Great Bend.
“It means a tornado is coming and we need to take cover right now. Here, help me.”
Catherine cleared a card table, and together the sisters lifted it over their mother’s bed to create a partial roof that covered the upper half of Nell’s frail body. Then both sisters knelt on the floor on one side of the bed and held tight to two legs of the table. Minutes passed before the first winds came in. The old house creaked and groaned. Then the rumble could be heard, faintly at first but growing steadily as the seconds ticked by. Within moments, the noise became so loud that it was exactly as if a locomotive were bearing down on tracks that ran straight through the front parlor and into the dining room. At that point, the windows blew out and the room became a cauldron of flying missiles and crashing furniture.
Catherine hunkered down lower. Frances fainted dead away.
Nearby, 17-year-old Ramon Esquivel Jr. and two sisters, Marcia, 13, and Sylvia, 11, were helping their father, Ramon Sr., with his janitorial business. The family was cleaning the last building of the night, the Heumann Dental Laboratory, at 1007 Monroe. Ramon Jr. stepped outside to empty the trash and looked up. A swarm of debris was circling in the milky sky above Kansas Avenue.
He ran back inside and shouted to his father and sisters.
“We’d better get out of here. There’s a tornado coming!”
Two dental technicians were working late in the building and Ramon told the men what he’d seen. They decided to stay.
But not the Esquivels. “Come on, kids! We’ll get under the bridge!” Ramon Sr. yelled. Out to 10th Street the family fled, with fleet-of-foot Marcia leading the way. Interstate 70 snaked through downtown Topeka in a deep trough set below the grade of surrounding streets. A five-lane bridge spanned the highway at 10th Street. The family made for it. Marcia could hear the crackling roar closing in behind her. Near the bridge, a chain-link fence blocked the way. Marcia and Ramon scrambled over, then Ramon Sr. lifted little Sylvia over and into the waiting hands of his son. The tornado was nearly on them. Ramon Sr. looked back as he pulled himself over. He could see the two-story, cinder-block dental building begin to come apart. He sprinted for shelter under the bridge deck. A couple of strangers already were there. Ramon could see all his children except Marcia. She was below; her momentum had carried her tumbling all the way to the bottom of the overpass.
The wind was howling now.
“Grab the pillar, honey!” Ramon Sr. yelled. “Hang on!”
Ramon Jr. pulled his little sister closer as the roar became fierce and terrible. Squinting against the flying sand and mud, Ramon Jr. watched a passing semi blow over on the interstate.
The ride from Tennessee to Kansas had been long, hot and windy for nine-year-old Jill Nauman. And still she wasn’t halfway home. Jill was returning from two weeks’ vacation, heading for her hometown of Battle Ground, Washington. She rode with her uncle, Robert Goodson, and two cousins, Wayne and Roger, in a 1940-something Ford. Jill’s mother, father, brother and sister took the lead in a separate car. The little convoy was heading for Jill’s grandparents’ farm in north-central Kansas for the night.
But here’s the funny thing. The group usually didn’t stop for attractions. And yet, earlier they’d decided to check out the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, and they’d spent the better part of two hours there. Plus, the old car Goodson was driving kept overheating and they’d have to stop and let it cool. This happened a couple of times throughout the day. So that’s how the travelers found themselves approaching downtown Topeka on I-70 just before 7:30 p.m. At that point, the rain started pelting so hard that the wipers on the old Ford couldn’t keep up and Goodson couldn’t see to drive, so he pulled over at an underpass to let the weather go by. Jill’s parents and siblings didn’t see them stop and drove on.
The rain had eased to a sprinkle when Goodson pulled back onto the highway. He hadn’t gone a mile, though, when he saw what seemed to be very large, black birds circling in the queer, low clouds above the buildings of downtown. He quickly pulled to the shoulder.
“Get out!”
Jill didn’t understand why. But she and the two boys obeyed.
“Come on!”
Bob herded the children across the westbound lanes and helped them over the concrete median barrier. The wind was blowing hard now. The group dashed to the shoulder and then scrambled up a muddy bank to the shelter of the 10th Street Bridge.
Jill was only nine. She was from Washington State. She didn’t even know what a tornado was. But she started getting scared when sticks and mud began to blow and swirl beneath the bridge. A couple of other people appeared and huddled near them. Jill had shorts on, and the sand was stinging her legs as if she were at the beach on a windy day.
“Down, everyone!”
Goodson was a big man and he shielded the children as best he could. But more objects were flying now, bigger objects — many more. To Jill, it felt as though someone was punching her hard in the legs and back. There was no light, just swirling shadows.
Oh, God, please stop this!
A rock or brick struck Jill, and her prayer was answered. The blow to the head was the last thing she remembered.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Under a Cobalt Sky
Pete Jackson could hardly believe he was still alive. He opened his eyes, looked up and saw only blue sky where the bowling alley roof had been. Except for a few white, puffy clouds, the sky was clear and perfectly still. Not even the gentlest breeze stirred. Amazingly, Jackson didn’t have a scratch on him. But he did feel something odd on his head. He reached up and cautiously touched his crew cut and found countless shards of glass nestled in his hair. He looked down at his shirt. His breast pocket was overflowing with splinters, glass and other tiny scraps of debris. How the winds managed this as Jackson lay face-down, covering his head, he had no idea. The other bowler he’d sought shelter with, Dodo Ramirez, likewise was peppered with wood and bits of glass. But he too, miraculously, was unhurt.
“Look, Dodo . . .”
Jackson pointed to the pin decks at the far end of the bowling alley. The wall behind the lanes was partially gone — a row of wrecked homes was visible off to the east — and the lanes themselves were covered with debris. But the bowling pins still stood, patiently awaiting the frame that now would never come.
Other bowlers emerged from the restrooms where they’d sought shelter a few minutes before. None appeared seriously injured.
Then someone shouted, “I think the old man’s hurt!”
Lisle Grauer always told his son that if a tornado ever came, he would get under the pool table. And that’s what he did. And now the table was flattened and partially buried, and Pla-Land’s proprietor and another man lay beneath it. The other fellow, Bud Brightfield, yelled that he was okay. But Grauer was silent. The bowlers dug frantically through boards and brick to get to the green felt. Then, six or eight to a side, they gently lifted the heavy table away.
Grauer’s body was covered with dust. He wasn’t moving or breathing. His face was badly scraped and blood trickled from his ears. The men tried to revive him but could not.
He was gone.
“Goddamn . . ., ” someone muttered quietly.
One of the bowlers went for help. Another said he’d stay with Grauer’s body, so Jackson wandered back to the lane where he’d been bowling. He found his ball still sitting on the return rack. The finger holes were packed tightly with the same detritus that had infiltrated his pocket. His street shoes, too, were brimmi
ng with the stuff, as if pack rats had been working overtime. Jackson shook out his shoes and ball and dropped them into his black vinyl ball bag. Then he climbed over the collapsed front of the building and stepped out onto Kansas Avenue.
The old man is dead. In a tornado. I’m lucky to be alive.
He took a deep breath.
Up and down the wide boulevard, buildings were flattened, ripped open or scraped clean. The rotten-egg smell of natural gas hung in the air. Dozens of cars from the nearby lots lay scattered and smashed. A V-8 motor sat alone in the middle of the street, air breather still attached, like an offering to the gods. Jackson looked around for his car, a black 1960 Thunderbird. It was his pride and joy, and his heart sank when he saw it. It appeared as if vandals had taken sledgehammers and methodically worked their way around the vehicle, smashing every panel and bending the short tail fins nearly down to the truck. A missile the size of a softball evidently had shot through the front windshield and out the back. The car was totaled.
Jackson began walking north on Kansas Avenue. The tall National Reserve Life building — the one the tornado had coiled around like a snake — still stood on the corner of 10th and Kansas, though severely damaged. The south face of the building bore a now-ironic advertisement for the insurance firm. In painted letters 10 feet tall, the sign read “. . . a refuge in time of storm.”
To the east, on the lot of Tom Mix Rambler Ranch, the wind had stacked cars in a metallic totem pole. Jackson looked north into the heart of downtown and a panicky, sinking sensation swept through him.
Look at all the bodies . . . .
In the distance, a half dozen or more inert human forms could be seen lying on the sidewalk and in the street along the 900 block of Kansas Avenue. Jackson quickened his step. Then a wave of relief: As he drew closer, he realized the bodies were actually mannequins that had been sucked from the big display windows of Pelletier’s Department Store. It still made for a surreal, grotesque sight. Several of the dummies had been hurtled through windshields, and now their rigid legs and expressionless faces jutted at odd angles from the row of destroyed cars parked along the avenue.
And Hell Followed With It: Life and Death in a Kansas Tornado Page 22