May 12, 2008 09:15 am
—
By Joe Hadsall
and Derek Spellman
news@joplinglobe.com
Derrick Clouse, of Newtonia, and his family thought Saturday night was a good time for a barbecue.
But before they could enjoy any grilled entrees, they watched Newtonia’s City Hall explode.
“There was no warning,” Clouse said. “The sky turned completely green, and clouds rolled in. I thought there would be rain, but then all the windows blew out of the houses.”
The storm destroyed most of Mill Street, ripping off roofs, uprooting trees and throwing debris around utility poles.
Thirteen lives were taken in Newton County by the twister, said Keith Stammer, on behalf of the Newton County Emergency Management Agency. Authorities released the names of the Newton County dead on Sunday night.
Five of those people were related to Zac Bilke, of Joplin. His grandfather-in-law, Paul Gallemore, was killed in his home north of Racine. The four others — a grandmother, aunt, uncle and cousin — were killed in their vehicle along Iris Road.
“They were going to a wedding in Seneca,” Bilke said. “And they ran right into it.”
Highway 43 and Iris Road
Randy Lowe and 10 relatives, some as young as 8 months, had gathered in his 1,100-square-foot home Saturday night after a family reunion. Lowe lives a little more than a stone’s throw from Lant’s Bridal Garden and Lant’s Country Feed Store at Highway 43 and Iris Road. Both businesses were demolished by the storm.
Lowe said he was with his family at about 6:30 p.m. when he heard a news report about the weather and walked out his back door to look. From his deck, he said, he could see what looked like clouds tumbling over one another on the ground and barreling toward his house.
Lowe told everyone to get into the hallway by his bedroom for shelter.
He said he can recall only fragments of what happened afterward.
The experience, he said, was akin to lying flat on railroad tracks while a train passed over. The wind roared. The house shuddered. Once, Lowe said, he thought he saw one of his relatives actually floating just a little bit above the floor.
“Everybody was screaming and hollering,” he said.
Everyone became pinned under debris of some kind as the house collapsed, Lowe said.
But the family members freed themselves or were freed by others, with only some suffering noticeable injuries, Lowe said.
“God,” Lowe replied when asked how he thought the 11 people had survived.
Lowe apparently was struck near the back of the neck and toward the bottom of his back by hail. Some pieces of glass were embedded in his shoulder, but he was otherwise all right.
Racine area
Bilke said his grandmother-in-law was urging her husband to take shelter at their two-story house on Highway 86. Bilke said she escaped serious injury.
“He was watching the storm on TV,” Bilke said. “She took cover but couldn’t get him to come down.”
Across the street, at 10577 W. Highway 86, lived Amanda Garner, her husband and three children.
Garner stood Sunday on a concrete slab where the house she rented used to stand. She walked to an outline of wooden studs with nails sticking up.
“This is the closet we would have been in if we were home,” Garner said. “If we were home, we would be dead.”
Garner said her home was “swept away” in the tornado. All she could salvage were a few family pictures.
She and her family were in Tulsa, Okla., on Saturday for an early Mother’s Day celebration. On the way back, she got a call about her home, she said.
“I thought there would be some damage,” Garner said. “I wasn’t prepared to see just a cement slab.”
Just up the road lived her landlord, Rick Hall. He also lost his home in the storm.
Hall also was out of town at the time of the storm. He said he and his wife went to her brother’s graduation in Kansas City.
When they returned, they found their home leveled and three of their vehicles destroyed.
“I used to live in the falls area in Joplin, with the flooding,” Hall said. “So I moved to the top of a hill, and a tornado got us.”
Granby
Dennis Waldroupe, of Granby, is glad that his wife, Cheryl, left the windows of her car open.
As he went outside to close them, he saw a wall of rain approaching from the west.
“I got back inside and shut the doors, and that’s when we heard all the wind noise,” Waldroupe said. “We had time to get in by a wall and cover ourselves up with a sofa.”
The tornado destroyed more than half the roof of their house at 18316 Highway 60. About 45 minutes earlier, their electricity had gone out.
“We were unable to watch TV,” Waldroupe said. “Sometimes we can hear sirens from Neosho, but we didn’t that day.”
Next door to the west, Bill Lynch watched the same wall of rain from his living room window. After seeing a Highway Patrol trooper drive down the road with his siren on, he decided to take shelter.
“I went to the basement but didn’t have a flashlight, so I went back up to get one,” Lynch said. “About when I got to the kitchen, I heard a roaring sound. So I went back, and as soon as I got back in the basement, that’s when it hit.”
The storm dropped large fragments of the Seventh-day Adventist Church on Lynch’s property. A tree plowed through the brick walls of his home.
Lynch had a Piper airplane in a garage near his home. The storm sent it on a short flight and wrapped it around a tree behind Waldroupe’s home.
Newtonia
One of the more historic places that fell victim to the storm was the Ritchey Mansion in Newtonia. The two-story house served as a hospital during the Civil War.
The storm opened a hole in the roof and swept away some of the bricks made by slaves in the 1850s.
The Newtonia Battlefields Protection Association has worked for the past five years to restore the mansion, said Russell Hively, caretaker.
“We had it in the best condition we ever had it,” he said. “We’ll have to get at it again. We’ve been at this too long to quit now.”
The storm left a path of destruction along Mill Street, said Clouse, the man whose family barbecue was interrupted.
After the storm hit, Clouse and his sister ran into his house, at 350 Mill St. As they hid under cover of a couch, they watched Newtonia City Hall get swept away by the tornado.
On Sunday, groups of Newtonia residents strolled the debris-covered streets, sidestepping fallen power lines and tree branches.
“Everyone is still in shock. We still don’t believe this happened,” Clouse said. “But the community has pulled together nicely. We should have this cleaned up by the end of summer.”
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Photos
Courtesy/Helicopter Advantage
An aerial view Sunday shows destruction left by one of Saturday’s tornadoes as it ripped through the intersection of Iris Road and Highway 43 in western Newton County. The location had been the home of Lant’s Bridal Garden and Lant’s Country Feed Store.