Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 3

IOA kVJV-F EE PBE TORNADO AFTERMATH WEDNESDAY, MAY 5, 1999 I I wanders, looking for his mother "Gust took her; search Thas come up empty ByDEANNABOYD I KNIGHT RIDDtR NtWSPAI'ERS HOW TO KELP Monetary donations for victims of the tornadoes that swept through Oklahoma and Kansas should be sent to: American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund co Southeastern Michigan Chapter P.O. Box 33351 Detroit 48232 Call1-800-HELP-NOWto donate or for more information. Donors should specify that the contribution Is for tornado relief. 4 by the deadly tornadoes that ravaged Oklahoma and Kansas late Monday. Officials said 11 people were killed there, most of them in Southern Hills.

Johnnie Lindsey was among the lucky ones. As the mile-wide tornado headed toward her mobile home, she had her four screaming children at her side and a pickup in her back driveway that wouldn't start. Lindsey, who celebrated her 31st birthday Monday, grabbed bedding and sofa cushions and ushered the family into the closet. Five minutes later, the walls were gone and only a kitchen is land and a few pieces of furniture remained. But Lindsey and her children, 11 months to 9 years, crouched in the rubble unscathed.

"Hey, we lived through it," she said Tuesday as she and her husband, James, picked through the debris that had been their home. "What better birthday than that? Happy birthday to me. Best present I ever got." Many of her neighbors weren't so fortunate. Sheriff's officials tailing the tornado arrived in Southern Hills to find bodies mingled with twisted debris scattered across the landscape. Among the dead were creek, the boy told officials.

"He said he saw the wind pick her up and take her off," said GraHy County Sheriff's Deputy Bob Paul. "When they found him, he was wandering the road." "He was looking for his mother," said Deputy Dick McCoy. Despite a daylong search by police, National Guard troops, the 30-member volunteer fire department and others, the boy's mother had not been found by Tuesday night. Bridge Creek, a farming community of (5,000 people about 30 miles southwest of Oklahoma City, was among the hardest hit an elderly woman, a 2-year-old child and a 3-week-old infant. Billy Palmore, a volunteer firefighter, said his first discovery was a family huddled together, the grandmother dying and a 3-week-old baby missing.

"We found the baby's body about 300 feet away in the trees," Palmore said. Unable to take ambulances into the rural area, rescuers used pickup trucks to load the injured, and later the dead. The school gymnasium was transformed into a triage area; the school cafeteria was a temporary morgue. "The people that were alive, frSi cp- fVvv 'Ski yy HOW TORNADOES FORM Tornadoes, which are columns of spinning air, reach from a thunderstorm cloud to the ground. They occur when cold, dry air hits warm, moist air.

The lighter, warm air rises quickly, pulling in the air around it and starting the spin. Tornadoes usually occur at the edge of a thunderstorm and usually but not always travel southwest to northeast. The average tornado moves at speeds of 20-40 m.p.h., stays on the ground about 1 0 minutes and travels about five miles. In Southern states, the peak tornado season is March through May. In Northern states, it's the summer months.

Tornadoes are most likely to happen between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. 1 BRIDGE CREEK, Okla. The 6-year-old boy walked aimlessly "tilong a road in the Southern Hills subdivision amid twisted mobile homes, crumpled cars and appliances scattered in the wreckage. When a massive tornado struck the community Monday evening, he and his mother were running to what they believed would be the safety of a nearby TORNADO I Signs of life sought; toll will climb From Page 1A 563 injured in that state by the tornadoes, which struck late Monday.

With vast sections of Oklahoma City and its suburbs leveled, police and National Guard troops searched the rubble with heavy machinery and specially trained dogs Tuesday night, and said they expected the body count to rise. At least five more people were killed and more than 100 injured in Wichita and Haysville, where homes in a trailer park were hurled into a nearby lake by the furious winds. Officials there said at least 200 homes and mobile homes were destroyed and they, too, expected to find more dead and injured. The same storm system produced another tornado in northeast Texas that killed one person Tuesday afternoon. The storm was the deadliest such tragedy to hit Oklahoma since 1947, when a twister killed 113 near Woodward.

It was the deadliest tornado outbreak since last summer, when a string of tornadoes killed 42 people in Florida. Both states called up the National Guard to help in the search for victims and to protect the flattened communities from looters. President Bill Clinton declared all of Oklahoma and parts of Kansas federal disaster areas, and the White House said Clinton will visit the stricken areas on Saturday. Meanwhile, thousands of residents sought shelter as new tornado warnings were posted in the region Tuesday night. "We're not out of the woods yet," Oklahoma state relief coordinator Albert Ashwood warned.

"The chance is there could be additional storms." National Weather Service meteorologists said three dozen tornadoes were reported across the region Monday night, 15 in Oklahoma. Officials said the death toll could have been worse if people had not heeded warnings to take cover underground. Television stations went live with coverage of the developing storm at least two hours before it hit the heavily populated Oklahoma City area. When'the storms passed and people emerged from basements and shelters to survey the damage, they found a scene of death and devastation. Eleven people had died in Bridge reek, about 30 miles southwest of Oklahoma City.

Others died in Oklahoma City and the nearby suburbs of Midwest City, Moore, Del City and Norman, said Ben Frizzell, spokesman for the state Office of Emergency Management. Thousands of residents told stories much like that of 73-year-old Anna Knerr. When the storm hit, she said she and her husband hid in a closet of their Bridge City home. "Then there just was this creepy feeling," she said. "The next thing I know, I was covered.

The roof just collapsed on me." The couple crawled to safety. "I've been through the war in Germany. I've had bombs fall all around me. Now I've been in a tornado," she said Tuesday from an emergency shelter where she and her husband had taken up residence. Rick Keating, an Oklahoma City resident, told reporters he had to "walk past my house twice before I recognized it" when he searched the area, looking for his roommate.

His street, which once featured well-kept houses and lawns, was a junkyard of debris after the storm. The Oklahoma City suburb of Joore resembj'd a war zone of wi i and lewled buildings. they were just covered with mud," Palmore said. "You just had to look and then suddenly, you'd see a pink tongue or white eyes." Left: Chealsea Zuchnic, 3, passes the remains of a truck in front of the family's demolished home in Bridge Creek, Okla. Above: Clifford Lovelace, 16, carries an injured family pet Tuesday.

nameless lake. Wreckage drifted past. Clothing hung on trees. Randy Rohlman picked up clothing near his trailer, which had been squashed by the roof of his neighbor's trailer home. He had gone to a bookstore a few minutes before the tornado hit.

"If I hadn't gone there, I might not be around," he said. "Boy, a lot of that stuff is buried. What a mess. I'm going to have to dig it out, piece by piece." By Tuesday afternoon, bulldozers had begun to push into the most devastated neighborhoods, helicopters moved overhead and the intermittent sound of chain saws could be heard through the roar of the wind. In those hardest-hit areas, most of the houses had been stripped of walls and roofing, not a leaf remained on the trees, many of which were strewn with bits of metal and wood like gruesome ornaments.

At one home, shirts flapped from their hangers in a closet that had lost its walls, and curtains waved like pennants through yawning, glassless windows. Long sheets of metal, apparently roofing material, hung from the few remaining power lines in Moore. Oddly, the lines themselves had not been pulled down. Residents were being allowed into many of the hard-hit areas, though those attempting to get inside were asked to show officials photo identification. A 6:30 p.m.

curfew was put into place. In those areas where the structures appeared most precarious, residents were still being kept out. Fire officials in Oklahoma City said they had conducted two cursory searches of the rubble and found no new victims. Late Tuesday, they were preparing to move into the destroyed areas with heavy machinery to continue the search. Kathi Ferguson, 38, collapsed against her mother as she looked at the wreckage of her Moore home.

"I spent most of my life in that house," she said through sobs. Ferguson had rushed from her home in Tulsa to find her parents and see what had become of the brick house where she had lived for 30 years. "It didn't collapse, it blew away," said Clifford Dodson, 73, her father, a retired Federal Aviation Administration technician. Marty and Veronica Bernich survived the tornado with their two daughters at their brick-and-frame home in the Highland Park neighborhood on the south side of Moore. "We huddled in a hallway under a mattress," Marty Bernich said.

"We could feel ourselves elevated, you know, like up to the sky. We could hear things smashing around us." Tuesday afternoon, Bernich, an art educator and potter, surveyed what was left of his house. "There's nothing left," he said. NANCY LAUGHLIN, NationWorld editor, edited this report. She can be reached at or laughUnfreepfess.com.

'1 "1 TORNADO MYTHS MYTH: Areas near rivers, lakes and mountains are safe from tornadoes. FACT: No place is safe. In the late 1980s, a tornado swept through Yellowstone National Park and mowed a path of destruction up and down a mountain. MYTH: Most damage from tornadoes is caused by low pressure, which can make buildings explode as the storm passes overhead. FACT: Violent winds and debris slamming into buildings cause most of the structural damage intornadpes.

MYTH: Windows should be opened before a DEADLY PATH The area where a series of tornadoes hit: Detail IOWA NEBRASKA MISSOURI Kansas City KANSAS Wichita OKLAHOMA ARKANSAS TK.VtC 5 Oklahoma City Dallas Worth THE NATION'S DEADLIEST TORNADOES May 31, 1985 90 killed in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Ontario. April 3-4, 1974 More than 300 killed in outbreak of 148 tornadoes in 1 1 Midwestern states. April 11, 1965 271 killed in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. May 25, 1 955 115 killed in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. June 8, 1953 142 killed in Michigan and Ohio.

March 21,1952 208 killed in Arkansas, Missouri and Texas. April 9, 1947 1 69 killed in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. June 23, 1944 1 50 killed in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Maryland. April 6,1936 203 killed at Gainesville, Ga. April 5, 1936 21 6 killed at Tupelo, Miss.

March 21, 1932- Alabama. 268 killed across March 18, 1925 689 killed in Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. May 27, 1896 300 killed in Missouri and Illinois. Feb. 19, 1884 More than 800 killed in Mississippi, Alabama, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana.

May 6, 1840 317 killed at Natchez, Miss. Photos by LM OTEROAssociated Press SAFETY TIPS BEFORE A TORNADO HITS: Develop a safety plan for you and your family. Have a weather radio with a warning alarm tone and battery backup to receive warnings. Pack an emergency supply kit. It should contain: A three-day supply of water (a gallon of water per person per day) Nonperishable food A change of clothing and shoes for each person Blankets or sleeping bags A first-aid kid Prescription medicine Emergency tools A weather radio, a portable radio, flashlight and plenty of batteries Extra set of car keys Credit card or cash TORNADO WATCH: Conditions are favorable for development of tornadoes.

Watches cover large areas and last two to six hours. People in watch areas should secure small objects such as garbage cans and bicycles, which could become missiles in high winds. Families should stay together and make a plan to seek shelter if needed. Stay tuned to radio, television or weather radio for more information or warnings. TORNADO WARNING: A tornado has been sighted or strongly indicated by radar.

Warnings generally cover one to four counties and last only a half-hour or so. Take these steps immediately: Seek shelter. In a home, go to a basement or storm shelter. If there is no basement, take cover in the center of the lowest floor in a small room. Take cover under sturdy furniture if possible.

At work or school, follow designated plans to move to interior hallways or small rooms on the lowest floor. Avoid areas with glass and wide roofs. Leave mobile home or vehicle and go to the nearest substantial structure. FOR MORE INFORMATION: Visit the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration Web site at www.nws.noaa.govomtomado.hbn Detroit Free Press. Knight Ridder Tribune, AP 12-mile-long, three-mile-wide path of destruction.

The sun was shining Tuesday at the lake Shore Trailer Park in Wichita, but a small, man-made lake was brimming with the remnants of people's A mobile home floated upside down in the tornado approaches to equalize pressure and minimize damage. FACT: Opening windows allows damaging winds to enter the structure. Leave the windows closed and go immediately to a safe place. HISTORICAL STORMS Longest path observed: 293 miles (191 7 storm, Indiana-Illinois) Fastest observed: About 280 m.p.h., with 180 m.p.h. updrafts RATING STRENGTH Researchers use a system called the Fujita-Pearson Scale to compare the strengths of tornadoes.

Tuesday's central Texas tornado was ranked an F4 by preliminary estimates. Wind speed Length of path Width of path Damage (m.p.h.) pn ground on ground TO Up to 72 Upto 1 Weak F1 73 to 112 1'to 3.1 miles 18 to 55 yds. Moderate F2 1 1 3 to 1 57 3.2 to 9.9 miles 56 to 175 yds. Considerable F3 158 to 206 10 to 31 miles 1 76 to 556 yds. Severe F4 207 to 260 32 to 99 miles 0.3 to 0.9 miles Devastating cc More More than More than inrroriiwo ro than 260 100 miles 1 mile lncreaiDie Evidence of an F6 tornado would Up to 379 Hkeiy be masked by damage from Inconceivable surrounding F4 and F5 winds Deadliest this century: 1925 tornado killed 689 people mile Upto 17 yds.

Light tornado with F2 speed might have an F1 path in which 168 people died. "It looks like the Murrah Building, but instead of nine stories tall, it's spread out over a large area," Assistant Oklahoma City Fire Chief Jon Hansen said. The scene was muct the same in Kansas, where left a Strong Violent Note: Storms rated for each characteristic, winds while 300 students, parents and teachers attended an assembly. There were only minor injuries. Many Oklahoma officials said the devastation reminded them of the April 19, 1995, jf ombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, Sources: National Weather Service.

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the national Tornado Project. Work) Almanac. Associated Press, l-ree Press library. Audubon Society Field Guide To North American Weather. World Almanac.

National Weather Service. AP. News reports The parking lot of West Moore High School was strewn with overturned cars. A dead white horse lay among the broken pickup trucks and smashed sedans. But officials talked of a miracle at the school.

Itsj-oof was blown off and windows iL'ktered by high.