Tag Archives: tornado

Twenty years beyond the twisters

Posted on by
Reply

An apartment building a couple of blocks from where I lived in Clarkfield in the summer of 1992.

June 16, 1992.

What I remember about that day was the heat and humidity. What I remember about that night is sheer terror.

Twenty years. It seems like a lifetime ago, and I’m glad I can say that now. Memories fade, fears subside. I no longer cry in a thunderstorm or hide in the basement when hail pellets hit the window. I have 20 years to thank for that.

Throughout the pages of this weekend’s edition of the Daily Globe, you will read about the destruction left in the wake of tornadoes that ripped apart the communities of Chandler and Lake Wilson and shattered lives, visibly and invisibly, on June 16, 1992.

I was three weeks into my first job away from home, hired as a 4-H Summer Assistant for Yellow Medicine County, when the tornado outbreak swept across southwest Minnesota.

This is the table where my roommate and I crawled under as the tornado hit Clarkfield on June 16, 1992.

More than two dozen twisters were reported that night, including one just outside the community of Clarkfield, where I was living. When my roommate arrived home from the office (she was a newspaper reporter), she invited me along out to the war zone to take some photos.

The image she captured made the top of the front page of the Advocate-Tribune that week, and I can still remember sitting in her car and staring in disbelief as she’d clicked the camera shutter. The tornado had picked up a large, two-story farm house and set it back down, on its roof, with a tree coming up through the middle of it. After seeing that destruction, the street flooding photos she shot in nearby Dawson and Boyd seemed a bit ho-hum.

I don’t remember what time we returned home that night, or how long we’d been there, when Round 2 ushered in by surprise.

The view from our window the next day.

I can’t recall the blare of the tornado sirens. What I remember is seeing this amazing flash of neon green outside the living room window, and screaming at my roommate to get under the table.

We were lucky. We were in a building built of brick and steel. The building swayed, the sounds were deafening; and as soon as it hit, it had passed. Of course, 20 years ago, it seemed like time stood still — that the chaos would never end.

I remember darkness and broken glass. I remember shaking, the uncontrollable kind of shakes that made my teeth chatter.

The somewhat cleaned up walkway we had to get through to reach Main Street. It was filled with tin, tree branches and other debris.

I remember clinging to the patchwork quilt my grandma made, and carrying it under my arm as my roommate and I cautiously stepped over downed wires, found our way around tree trunks, limbs and branches, and walked through water puddles as we ventured first to the Clarkfield Fire Hall and then to the local school, where the Red Cross was mobilizing.

In one evening I went from being a naïve farm kid learning to be an adult, to an adult living as a victim of Mother Nature.

I wasn’t ready to be in that situation in my life, but then life has a way of taking its own course, doesn’t it?

Having survived a tornado, I can tell you the last thing I thought I’d ever do was voluntarily enter another war zone. But then, I had an editor at Redwood Falls who forced me to face my fears and develop the thick skin we journalists need.

Lee sent me out to take photos at an accident scene one day —it was the first time I’d ever taken accident photos. The car was mangled beyond recognition, and I’d learned that a baby was killed.

My car was parked between this building and that little utility post on the right. We had to lift tin from the hood and roof of the car to get it out.

A life was lost and I was taking pictures of the aftermath. It seemed heartless, and for the first of many times, I questioned my career choice. I begged Lee to never send me out on an accident call again, but he ignored my request. A week later, I was sent to another accident scene. This time, I snapped photos as EMTs tended to a woman screaming in pain. As I recall, she had a broken leg.

The more I complained about covering accidents, the more it seemed I was the one sent to take photos. I should have learned not to complain —instead, I learned to separate the emotional trauma from the job. Reporters do that — I do that — and even then it’s hard to get beyond the “life sucks and then you die” approach to living.

Nearly six years after June 16, 1992, tornadoes ravaged the communities of Comfrey and St. Peter. With my somewhat thicker skin, I realized if I was ever going to “get over” the trauma from the Clarkfield tornado, I needed to step into the war zone.

Having a job to do, rather than being the victim, helped me to heal. I could relate to the stories of terror and the questions of where to go and what to do.

The F3 tornado that went through Clarkfield uprooted trees, exploded tin buildings and grain bins and severely damaged homes. Six people were injured that night in Clarkfield, but everyone survived.

There’s a saying that time heals all wounds, and while the first anniversary was marked with raw remembrances, the nightmares for me had mostly subsided after five years. They resurfaced briefly after my work in Comfrey and volunteering as a one-day stringer for the then-sister publication, the St. Peter Herald.

I can honestly say it’s been a while since I’ve awoken from nightmares of twisters chasing after me. Then again, I don’t watch the weather channel and you can’t force me to watch the movie, “Twister.”

Today marks the 20th anniversary since that night of terror in Clarkfield. It seems a bit of a relief to be able to say that. OK, 20 years have passed. I’ve moved on. I’ve changed. I’ve survived.

Flying cows

Posted on by
2

I woke up at 3:28 a.m. today. Ordinarily I should be dragging right about now, but the opposite has happened. I’m hyper.

In fact, my boss asked me if I drank a mug of coffee this morning. I am not a coffee drinker (I always say I’m not old enough to have acquired a taste for it), but I am on my second dose of Diet Coke for the day. Thus, I’m pretty sure the hyperactivity will continue! (Poor Dan Anderson – the county’s emergency management director – gets to put up with me this afternoon for a road tour of flood damaged property!)

There’s a reason why I woke up at 3:28 a.m. – I had a nightmare involving flying Holstein cows. In my nightmare, a tornado was sweeping across a corn field, picking the cows up and sending them in my general direction.

It was a scene straight out of the movie, “Twister.” The poor cows had all four legs sticking straight up as the wind rolled them through the air like a towel tossing in the clothes dryer. It was not a pretty sight!

Now, a tornado tossing cows about is a rather believable scenario. What wasn’t believable, especially for me, was that instead of running to the basement for cover, I decided to start washing a counter full of dirty dishes. The worst part – well, aside from flying cows – was that the dishes weren’t mine and neither was the house!

From the time the nightmare woke me up until my alarm clock sounded, I tossed and turned and wondered what on earth the nightmare meant. I used to have tornado nightmares a lot, mostly in the first five years after I survived a tornado in Clarkfield on June 16, 1992.

I haven’t encountered tornado damage since June and July, when I reported on the destruction in Osceola and Lyon counties in Iowa. What has happened, however, is that I’ve visited two dairy farms in the last five days. Coincidence? Hmm … maybe. Where’s a good dream (nightmare) analyzer when you need one?

If you have any theories … funny, entertaining, serious or otherwise, please post a comment on my blog. Meanwhile, I better set aside my caffienated Diet Coke for the day or I’ll be bouncing off the walls at home tonight!

In the aftermath of an Iowa storm

Posted on by
1

Ellison Hayenga had just finished showing co-worker Kari Lucin and me the damage a tornado caused to a rural Sibley farmsite Saturday afternoon, when he was reminded by an Osceola County Sheriff’s Deputy the county was once again under a tornado watch.

Hayenga already knew a watch had been issued, and he didn’t need the National Weather Service to tell him. After more than three decades on the Sibley Fire Department, during which he has taken just about every storm spotter training that’s been offered, Hayenga has a sense for these things. Saturday’s steamy conditions and hazy sky served as fair warning.

When Kari and I arrived at the Sibley Fire Hall just before noon on Saturday, it was Hayenga who shared with us stories of the Friday night rescues. He talked of the extrication efforts needed to remove 11 victims from three vehicles that, while shielded from a highway overpass on the south side of town, were picked up by the powerful tornado and tossed about — one landing approximately 50 yards from where its driver sought shelter.

It was Hayenga and another firefighter who showed us the dots on a county map — dots representing farm places that suffered damage from the six confirmed tornadoes that swept across Osceola County.

Ultimately, it was also Hayenga who served as our media escort through the hardest hit areas of the countryside.

And that’s where the story of one man’s encounter with Mother Nature begins.

Sibley firefighters were paged at about 9:45 p.m. Friday to perform their dual roles as storm spotters. Hayenga and another guy took the department’s grass rig and headed west of town and, unknowingly, right into the path of the storm.

Said Hayenga, most guys won’t ride with him anymore when it comes to storm spotting. Whether it’s his high level of training, or just unfortunate luck, he seems to end up where the action is.

Friday night was no exception. It was Hayenga and his truckmate that spotted the tornado, then three tornadoes, that descended from the sky southeast of Little Rock. Had it not been for the constant streaks of lightning, they never would have seen them.

“It made it tough with darkness,” he shared. Then, with an uneasy little laugh, he said, “I seem to be chasing or getting chased.”

As Hayenga steered his truck down a gravel road during our guided tour, he slowed a bit to show us just where he first saw the twister appear.

It had been raining so hard Friday night that they had to slow down to about 5 mph for a while.

“We couldn’t see them — we were kind of sensing where they were,” Hayenga said.

Tornadoes are unpredictable. They can change course faster than any human can react, but for a trained spotter like Hayenga, tracking the storm is just part of what he signed on for 31 years ago.

As we journeyed from one damaged farm to another, Hayenga told us that he had called Sibley Fire Chief Ken Huls by 5 o’clock Friday afternoon with an uneasy feeling that something would pop in the county that evening.

“I said, ‘This one is very different,’” he recalled. “I’ve gotten to read the weather more.”

Well, that just begged my next question. Here we were, traveling the back roads of Osceola County over the noon hour on Saturday, already aware that we were in a tornado watch.

“What about today?” I asked. “Are you sensing something will happen again?”

He winced slightly at the question, looked over at me and slowly nodded his head before looking back out the window at the hazy Saturday sky.

That night, as the tornado sirens sounded in Worthington and the TV weatherman reported rotations and sightings just to our south — in Osceola County — I thought of Hayenga. I imagined he was out chasing the storms, running on adrenaline and very little sleep, but still doing his job.

He and the rest of the Sibley Fire Department — as well as the sheriff’s office, ambulance and rescue crews, and the multiple departments who provided mutual aid — deserve many thanks for the work they did this past weekend, and the work they continue to do to protect and serve the public.