“Tessa! Wake up! What is that noise?”
Tessa awoke with a start and was up on her knees in the middle of the bed, listening intently. Finally, she said, “I have no idea . . .”
“Well, I don’t either,’’ Norma replied.
Whatever it was, it was getting louder.
Norma next went to the bedroom to check on her 16-day-old son. He was sleeping well. She stared at him for a moment and thought about how hard it was to get him down. She didn’t want to wake him. But a voice inside her spoke:
Get your baby. Right now. Get your baby.
So she did, and in that moment, everything changed. The house started shaking, and there were several enormously loud crashing noises, and then the rumble became deafening as Norma raced back to Tessa’s room with Paul Frederick in her arms. The two women got down between the bed and the dresser and yanked the mattress over top of them. Norma pulled her son to her chest. He squirmed a little but remained asleep. At that point, all hell broke loose as the windows were sucked out, walls came down and furniture hurtled into the void. Still and all, Paul Frederick slept.
Please, God. Don’t let him wake up to this.
Sure enough, the little guy kept sleeping as the world disintegrated around him.
Hiding beneath a miniature pool table, eight-year-old Dominic Gutierrez listened in dry-mouth terror to the grinding sound of the approaching tornado. His brothers and sisters were sobbing beside him. His mother was saying the rosary in Spanish and making the sign of the cross. Shafts of late-afternoon sunlight bore into the cellar through two high, small windows and painted the far wall in liquid bronze. But the color quickly faded as darkness swept over the house, like the shadow of an approaching giant, and the roar arrived.
“Look at the birds!” the old German exclaimed. “Look at them!”
The man, a worker at the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway car shops, was standing with 10 or 15 others outside the west end of the massive car barn, a brick structure enclosing nearly a dozen tracks. Inside, scores of freight cars sat in various stages of assembly and repair. The men were staring off to the southwest toward a flock of black objects that swirled and dove in the distance.
“Those aren’t birds,” another man said quickly. “Those are shingles and debris. That’s the tornado!”
Workers on the second shift at Santa Fe had been monitoring transistor radios and were aware that a tornado was in the city. So when the cry went up that it was coming, it didn’t take long for the men to seek cover wherever they could. Olen Robbins, a lanky, 27-year-old foreman in the wheel shop, quickly realized that the best places to hide were filling up fast. He shouted to some companions.
“Come on! Let’s go to the refinery. There’s a basement there.”
Five men piled into Robbins’ ’64 Plymouth Valiant Signet parked nearby. He backed out and raced 100 yards to a small, brick building near the center of the shop complex. The refinery had once been used to reprocess waste oil but was no longer operational. Fortunately, the building wasn’t locked. As the Plymouth skidded to a stop and the men jumped out, Robbins glanced to the southwest. He could see the tornado. It was enormous, moving steadily between the shops and the sun and quickly turning day almost literally into night.
The wind was frantic and rising.
The men dashed inside and down some stairs to the open basement and crouched in a trash-filled corner near a bank of empty lockers. At that point, the sound began: To Robbins, it was a mechanical lope, like a huge, laboring motor with rpm’s that rhythmically rose and fell. The noise grew louder as the men tried to get lower to the ground.
Then someone shouted, “Olen! Look! There goes your car!”
Robbins turned and glanced up through the tall windows along the first floor to see his Valiant soaring past, 20 feet off the ground. At that point, the wind forced its way into the building and trash was flying and the metal lockers were banging open and shut.
I hope I get through this without losing my life . . .
Dolores “Steph” Esquivel was a fiery, rebellious beauty and the oldest daughter of Ramon Esquivel Sr., the janitor who’d sought shelter with his son and two youngest daughters at the 10th Street overpass on the edge of downtown. Steph was 19 and living in the family home on Golden Avenue, east of the shops. The Esquivels’ house didn’t have a basement, so when the sirens went off, Steph and her mother, Phyllis, ran to the Chavezes’ across the street. Maybe 20 people from the neighborhood were there: the Torrez, Muñoz, Valdivia and Rangel families and others. Steph was nine months pregnant, with her due date just two weeks away. She wasn’t married and the father was gone for Texas. But the women in the neighborhood had held a baby shower for her anyway the week before and now, in the basement — as the rumbling sound drew closer — they surrounded Steph and formed a human shield. Ten or more women nearly covered her.
It was a noble and courageous act. But Steph was still petrified. She was certain she was about to die. Worse, she fully expected immediate and eternal damnation.
God will punish me for getting pregnant.
The tornado was blasting now, deafening. At the apex of the sound, Steph looked straight up to see the floorboards ripping loose between the joists above her head, just like someone was popping them up with an enormous pry bar.
Oh, God, we’re going to die!
Armco Steel manufactured culverts, spillways and other corrugated steel products at a large plant east of the Santa Fe car shops. After smashing Santa Fe, the tornado plowed into Armco’s storage yard and lifted hundreds of heavy culverts into its turbulent, slippery grasp.
A few blocks away, at the Taylor house on B Street, Chick and Fern had finally managed to get Everett calmed down. Chick went into his bedroom to get some cigarettes and Everett tagged along. Fern was already there, hanging up some clothes she’d ironed.
She heard aircraft overhead.
“I wonder why they’re flying those airplanes today . . .”
Chick said, “Those aren’t planes. It’s that damn thing coming . . .”
The words weren’t out of his mouth when the cinder-block house exploded. A concrete block struck Fern and knocked her cold. Stella, Fern and Everett’s sister, was blown out into the front yard. Everett was badly cut on the head and likewise ended up in the grass. And a 10-foot-long culvert shot out of the sky, found the bedroom and landed on Chick.
When the sirens went off, 16-year-old Linda Jones had been lounging on the couch, reading Mad magazine with her hair in curlers. She lived with her mother, brother, uncle, aunt and grandfather on Arter Street, not far from the airport. Her grandfather, John Goodall, was 80. He didn’t trust the family’s block house basement to hold up in a tornado, and he’d mentioned his fear once to the neighbors across the street, Carol Laird and his wife Edna Mae. The Lairds had a solid ranch house they’d built themselves in ’54, and it had a big, poured concrete basement. Carol had told Goodall that his family was more than welcome to come over anytime the weather got bad.
So they did, and a lot of others did, too. There weren’t many basements in the Garden Park neighborhood. Twenty-five people were in the Lairds’ basement in all, family and friends, including Kitty Sims, the lady who lived in the next house to the north. Mrs. Sims had lost her husband to a heart attack the previous Friday and had buried him on Monday.
The group was listening to the radio and knew the tornado was moving their way. Linda’s grandfather and Carol kept watch out the small basement window. Pretty quickly, they saw chunks of sheet metal and debris from Armco flying in the rolling blackness that was moving in from the southwest.
“Everybody get down! It’s coming! God help us all!” Carol shouted. The large group squeezed together. Mrs. Sims, the woman who’d just lost her husband, started screaming. Then Linda heard the roof rafters crack and felt such a strong pull of suction that she was certain they all were about to be lifted into the air. When the tornado was on top of them, the world became deathly silent for a mom
ent — like the eye of a hurricane — and Edna Mae Laird thought her eardrums were going to pop out of her head. Then the roar began again.
A friend of Linda Jones’s brother, 19-year-old Bobby Coffman, was watching TV at his parents’ house a block away with a buddy, Gary Fisher. When it became clear that the tornado was heading into Oakland, Bobby decided to make a run for the Joneses’ house. He knew they had a basement. He urged his parents to come, but his father refused. So Bobby and his friend took off out the back door, dashing at a dead run through the wet grass, across a vacant lot to the now-empty house. As he ran, Bobby could see the black wall out of the corner of his eye, closing in from the southwest. They made it to the Joneses’ back door, burst in and ran for the small basement, then huddled in a corner. The boys grabbed a trashcan lid to protect their heads.
Moments later, the entire house lifted off like a rocket ship above them and atomized in the thundering gale.
Fourteen-year-old Wanda Idlet had stopped trying to convince her mother that they needed to seek shelter and was instead thinking of fleeing on her own when she saw her dad, Charles Idlet, pull into the driveway. She hurried out to meet him.
“There’s a tornado coming, and Mom doesn’t want to go to the neighbors!” Wanda cried. “We’ve got to get out of here, Dad. Let’s just get in the car. We can outrun it!”
Her father was tired and worn from a long day. He was a concessionaire, running a snack wagon downtown.
“Come on now, Wanda . . . We’ll be all right.”
They turned and looked to the southwest. Wanda could see sunshine. Her heart brightened. “Look! The sun’s coming out,” she said. “Maybe it’s not going to hit.”
But it was a ruse, because very quickly Wanda could see swirling darkness sliding in front of the sun and chunks of roofing and steel from Armco hurtling through the air. They could hear the rumble now.
“Get inside!” Charles yelled.
They dashed back into the little house. Wanda ran for the bedroom. She tried to get under a bed but the space was too narrow. So she and her mother climbed into the bedroom closet and pulled the flimsy, accordion door closed. She could hear the tornado grinding closer. Debris started pelting the house. Panicked, Wanda tried to stick her head under a small stepstool in the corner of the closet. The pressure against her ears became unbearable as the jet-engine roar reached its highest pitch. Debris was slamming the house like tank rounds.
Wanda closed her eyes. She prepared to die but first tried to work out a deal with God.
If you let me live, I’ll be a better person. I’ll try to live for you. Please God. Let me live.
David Briery’s father was trying to reason with his 20-year-old son and convince him to leave the family’s cinder-block house on Strait Avenue and come to a neighbor’s basement.
“Come on, son. This isn’t a joke or some kind of a science project. Don’t be foolish. This could get you killed. We need to get out of here right now. Now let’s go.”
But Briery wouldn’t budge. The University of Kansas student was home for the summer, working in the passenger accounting department at Santa Fe. He was studying biochemistry at KU. But he’d always been fascinated by tornadoes.
“No way, Dad. This is probably the only time in my life that I’ll ever have a chance to see a tornado. I’m staying. I’ve got to see this.”
“Suit yourself, but I think you’re making a terrible mistake.”
His parents departed, and Briery continued to listen as Bill Kurtis described the tornado’s progress through the city. When Kurtis announced that the tornado was passing through downtown, three and a half miles away, Briery tipped a heavy couch over in the family room to make a shelter near the big picture window that looked out to the east. There was an alfalfa field across the street and beyond it, the low buildings of the Weather Bureau office and the airport.
Moments later, Kurtis reported that the funnel was approximately one mile southwest of the airport. Briery dashed to the back bedroom and looked out the window. He could see swirling clouds in the west and what appeared to be snow falling straight down from a windless sky. Except that it wasn’t snow, it was paper. So he ran back to the front room. Now Kurtis was saying the tornado was crossing Strait Avenue.
That’s our street!
The power immediately failed. From his makeshift bunker under the couch, Briery peered out the picture window. He could see the tornado a thousand feet to the south, moving diagonally across his field of vision. It was churning out of the Garden Park neighborhood and into the open ground around the airport — a towering, sprawling, rolling mass of mud and cloud, choked with debris. As the tornado approached the airport, its winds lifted several small aircraft high into the air. One of the planes burst into flames as it spiraled back to Earth.
Dave Perkins, the volunteer with the CB spotters group stationed at the Weather Bureau office, earlier had stepped outside with several others as the tornado tore through downtown. He could see debris swirling over the city. Then someone yelled, “Here it comes!”
The men dashed back into the Weather Bureau office. The building didn’t have a basement, so people sought shelter wherever they could, in closets and under desks. Perkins got beneath a big military surplus table in the radar room. The whine and roar cranked up as the tornado drew near. Windows shattered, papers flew and doors slammed shut as though a deranged person were stalking the halls. But the building held. When the winds began to subside, Perkins and several others ran outside in time to see the burning aircraft fall from the sky. The tornado, black and fulminating, was moving straight down the main runway like a jet on its takeoff roll. As the funnel slipped off the end of the runway pavement, it pinwheeled the huge trees that lined the banks of the distant Kansas River. And then, just as it reached the water, Perkins watched in astonishment as the entire funnel — from earth to sky — suddenly changed color from black to white. Instantly, like a shape-shifter.
And then it started to lift.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A World Transformed
Dominic Gutierrez, the eight-year-old who’d ridden his bike to the nearby market just before the tornado struck, was craning into the silence when he heard familiar voices outside. They belonged to his cousin, Phyllis Roacha, and her boyfriend, Phillip Hernandez. Phyllis lived next door. Dominic raced up to the trapdoor at the top of the basement stairs but the door was blocked. His mother shouted to Phyllis, and soon Dominic could hear Phil above him, moving heavy objects and then lifting the hatch. One by one, the Gutierrez family made their way up the narrow stairs to the parlor. The front of the house was gone. The roof was off, too, and a giant tree was leaning against a second-floor bedroom. Dominic walked out to the back porch and looked down the alley toward Guthrie’s market. Homes were flattened, cars were smashed and once-tall trees were denuded and blasted and tall no more. The only things moving were the live wires snaking across the ground. The scene took Dominic’s breath away. He thought he might cry but did not.
Everything I’ve known is no more.
Clarence Ginter and his co-worker at the Vickers station were plastered with mud, straw, sticks and blood but very much alive as they struggled up the slippery bank of the Shunganunga Creek. The gas station was scraped clean; only a bathroom wall and toilet stools remained. As the two men took in the devastation, a stranger appeared. He was medium-built and may have had dark hair. But it was hard to tell for all the blood on his head.
The man’s name was Francis Bordner. He was a 38-year-old electrician at Santa Fe and a reservist with the police department. He’d been on his way to work at the police station and had just turned onto the 6th Street Bridge when he spotted the tornado coming on from the south. So he made a U-turn, swung into the station lot, and dashed inside the building seconds after Ginter and his co-worker ran for the creek. Bordner took cover in the women’s bathroom. He wrapped himself around the toilet stool and hung on as the tornado ripped the building apart around him. The winds even sucke
d the water from the toilet. But the porcelain stool didn’t shatter. And Bordner didn’t let go. He was badly shaken and suffered several deep cuts to his scalp. But he was all right.
Ginter’s co-worker, the kid from Gallatin, Missouri, was getting restless as the shock of events began to wear off. He looked to the northeast. The damage path was savage and unrelenting.
“My sister’s house is over there, Clarence. I hope she’s all right. I gotta go. I gotta go check on her.”
“You sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?” Ginter said. “You’re cut up pretty good.”
“Naw, I’m fine, really. I am. I’ll see ya ’round.”
And with that, the skinny kid from Missouri turned and jogged east into the apocalypse. Ginter watched him go and realized too late that the young man had a piece of wood sticking out of his shoulder.
He never saw the kid again.
Across the street at the pawn shop, Lanny Ellis could see sunlight filtering through the joints in the false ceiling. The roof was gone, but remarkably, the building and most of its contents were intact.
“I think we got lucky, Darrell,” Ellis said. The half-brothers stepped out the back door and gazed in silence at the debris scattered the length of the Shunga. The open ground along the creek looked like a landfill as far as the eye could see. Wrecked houses were visible in the distance. Nearby, a broken hydrant sprayed a geyser high into the air. Ellis and Johnson returned to the front of the store. The plate glass windows were gone; the gas station and Dairy Queen across the street were destroyed. Apparently, a couple of kids who’d been working at the DQ had taken refuge in the walk-in cooler. The move undoubtedly saved their lives, as the metal box was the only man-made object still intact on the north side of the intersection.
And Hell Followed With It: Life and Death in a Kansas Tornado Page 25