wfn.org | Kansans tell of eerie scene during tornado

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

May 10, 1999 News media contact: Linda Green*(615)742-5470*Nashville, Tenn.
10-71B{264}

NOTE: Pictures of damage by the tornado may be found in the UMNS photo
gallery. This report is accompanied by a sidebar, UMNS story #265.

By Kathy Kruger Noble*

WICHITA, Kan. (UMNS) -- It was an eerily familiar scene.

People walking along the side of the road, some holding the hand of a child
or carrying an infant. Many clutched what belongings they could carry.
Occasionally, someone pushed a wheelbarrow loaded with possessions or drove
a small cart hooked to a filled wagon.

At the checkpoint, armed guards waved the walkers across the border and
carefully checked the identification of anyone wanting to enter the area the
walkers left.

The scene was one viewed many times in recent weeks in television reports
from the Kosovo-Albania border. This time, however, the setting was 63rd and
Broadway in south Wichita on May 4, less than 24 hours after devastating
tornadoes struck the area.

The scene was repeated throughout Haysville and south and south central
Kansas all week as survivors of the storms salvaged what possessions they
could from their homes and crossed the railroad tracks that often separated
the disaster area from property virtually untouched by the
storms. Vehicles entering the area were stopped by law enforcement officials
assigned to protect the survivors and their property from looters, and to
stop sightseers who complicated the work of rescue workers.

Sheila Pedrow began working as secretary at Haysville United Methodist
Church on the morning of May 3. Less than a day later, the single mother and
her two children, Justin, 13, and Amanda, 10, were homeless, their rental
house severely damaged.

The family and one of Justin's friends had just returned home from the ball
park when the electricity went out. A few minutes later, a hail storm
started. Pedrow, who had survived a 1991 twister, sensed a tornado was
coming.

A neighbor threw mattresses over the children and tried to protect Pedrow,
who was attempting to hold the front door shut. In seconds, the windows were
blown out, the garage door splintered, the roof was peeled back and sheet
metal filled the yard.

Coming out of their house, "I could hear a lady crying," Justin said. 

"We could hear people screaming," Pedrow continued. "There was a car in the
middle of the street with a tree across it. We couldn't get to it because of
the lines being down."

Three and a half days after the tornado, Pedrow said she is "not as
devastated this time. If you've never seen it before, you have no idea."

The hardest part for her this time has been asking for the help she needs.

"The clothes I have on, they are all from the (Haysville) Activity Center. I
don't know where to go to live," she said.

"I was OK until this morning, at the Comfort Inn, when I went down to get
some doughnuts for the kids," she said. A couple she had met the night
before handed her an envelope with money in it and said to write when she
had an address. "That's when I lost it," she said, fighting back tears.

The May 3 tornado was also the second one for 77-year-old Jean Detwiler of
Wichita. The Dawson United Methodist Church member vividly remembers going
to the storm cellar when she was 7 years old and storms struck the Hunter
Oil Field.

She and a friend, Ralph Tucker, were having a "wonderful conversation when I
asked, 'Don't you think we should go to the basement?'"

Detwiler grabbed her purse, cell phone and flashlight. Settling in for a
stormy night, she was telling Tucker of a time when she and her children
took blankets and moved under the pool table when the sirens blew.

"In just a few minutes, Ralph said, 'I think we better get under there,' "
she recalled. A few seconds later, they heard the roar and loud bangs as
debris from a nearby school hit the front of the house and a garage beam
collapsed. Debris and insulation was in a four-foot pile against the house.
 
Neighbors were at her home within minutes checking on her, and the help has
continued since.

The insurance appraiser estimated it will be six months before Detwiler can
move back into her home. She is living with her daughter.

Still she said, she is blessed. She came through without a scratch. "My
house wasn't the worst one (in the neighborhood). A house two doors down
will have to be demolished."

When the tornado struck Dean Parker's home, it was one of six in the new
development that was leveled. The storm came eight years and eight days
after the Haysville/Andover tornado struck that home, damaging but not
destroying it.

The destruction on May 3 was massive, but Calvin Parker said his father and
mother "found all the things that really mattered. There is only one old
picture that they'd like to find. That's pretty good for all the antiques
they had in here."

The Parkers and some neighbors rode out the storm in a concrete storm
cellar, one that Calvin said has been a model for a shelter in his home and
those of his brothers and sisters.

"They had quite a surprise when they came out," said Calvin Parker.

Joining the Parkers in their cellar were neighbors Vicky and Dwain Moore and
their three dogs. Watching the movie "Noah's Ark," Dwain Moore thought the
family was safe as he heard the storm warnings for Belle Plaine.

Not long afterwards, Vicky Moore said, "We need to go. I grabbed the dogs.
We called Parker and said, 'Are you going down?'"

Once in the shelter, she said, "We could hear it coming. It blew right over
us. It took the top off the storm shelter. The stuff from the house came
right on top of it. It took a little while to get out of it."

Besides their home, they lost six vehicles and the trailer in which her
mother and father lived. Her parents were in Minnesota during the storm.

People who want to contribute to aid efforts can make donations to the
United Methodist Committee on Relief's Domestic Disaster Response #901670-1.
Designate the check for "Kansas," "Oklahoma," or "Kansas and Oklahoma."
Donations may be placed in church offering plates or sent directly to UMCOR
at 475 Riverside Drive, Room 330, New York, N.Y. 10115.  Credit card
donations may be made by calling (800)554-8583.

# # #

*Noble is the coordinator of communications for the Kansas West Annual
Conference.

______________
United Methodist News Service
http://www.umc.org/umns/
newsdesk@umcom.umc.org
(615)742-5472