Arizona Daily Star from Tucson, Arizona • Page A004

FINAL A4 TUCSON REGION Thursday, October 7, 2010 ARIZONA DAILY STAR Irresistible force turns semi into immovable object By Cyndy Cole ARIZONA DAILY SUN BELLEMONT Trucker Ross Wenneberg nearly collided head-on with Wednesday's tornado. Wenneberg was attempting to exit Interstate 40 at the Bellemont off-ramp early in the morning when the tornado approached, lifting one side of his truck off the ground. The semi behind him was toppled by the wind; a train had al ready been hit directly and multiple cars derailed. Wenneberg hung on to the steering wheel, trying to straighten out the rig and get all the wheels back to earth. "I thought for sure I was going to go over, but I didn't," he said.

The wind broke his passenger-side window and a window in his sleeper cab, throwing glass around the cab. He was still in gear when the truck touched ground again, and he hit the gas only to see he wasn't going anywhere. The wind was so strong that it held his truck there, in place, on the exit ramp for a few moments. Wenneberg, formerly from Flagstaff, is now an Arkansas resident and was hauling produce from California to Indianapolis. His truck is only 2 weeks old.

Bellemont Truck Repair was busy pulling totaled semis off In terstate 40 into into Wednesday afternoon. The Pilot Travel Center in Bellemont became a shelter for truckers and others in transit during the storm, though it didn't have electricity or water and couldn't sell coffee or fuel. Electrician Chris Thomas was working at SCA Tissue early Wednesday when he and others were told to take shelter in the hallways. CRYSTAL OCHOA ARIZONA REPUBLIC Jennifer Cox, left, and neighbor Amanda Radke, 11, huddle in the rain, wondering what comes next amid the damage to Cox's Bellemont house. FELICIA FONSECA THE ASSOCIATED PRESS a year, but rarely if ever sees twisters come in clusters and cause the kind this wreckage in Bellemont, meteorologists said.

It was about 5:45 a.m. and hailing intensely when Thomas saw a funnel form in the dark sky. "It's insane. I've never seen anything like this," he said. The funnel looked about 80 feet wide and came from south to north, snapping trees and derailing train cars, before it moved into the fore st.

"When it was hitting those trees, it was literally throwing them," Thomas said. tered glass. But nothing hit them, "Miraculously, we're OK," he said. tered voters, appears to bear that out at a national level. It found that the top issue for those registered to vote is education, followedbyjobs and the health care.

Immigration ranked fifth, behind the federal budget deficit. There was an initial burst of interest after Gov. Jan Brewer signed the measure in April. But some of the steam has gone out of the issue since a federal judge in July blocked key provisions of the law from taking effect. Of those registered voters, 47 percent believe that Democrats have more concern for Hispanics than Republicans.

HQ ME SHLlW EVER TWISTERS Continued from Page Al state 17 south of Flagstaff. National Weather Service meteorologist George Howard said 22 tornado warnings were issued Wednesday. The radar showed many more twisters likely formed but weren't confirmed. Sparsely populated Arizona typically has four tornadoes a year, but rarely if ever sees twisters come in clusters and cause the kind of damage seen Wednesday, meteorologists said. "The hammering that Northern Arizona is getting right now is exceptional," said National Weather Service meteorologist Ken Waters in Phoenix.

"It's not uncommon this time of year to have one or two tornado reports or a warning, but this is quite an outbreak." The storm system that moved across the West over the last few days dropped record-setting rain in northern Nevada, pounded Phoenix with hail and dumped enough snow in the Sierra Nevada to close a highway pass. In Utah, two teenagers were struck by lightning outside their school Tuesday. They were air JOSH BIGGSARIZONA DAILYSUN Trailers at Camping World in Bellemont were tossed throughout the area when a tornado struck the business Wednesday. lifted to a Las Vegas hospital, where one regained consciousness Wednesday. A trauma surgeon predicted the other would recover but suffer major scarring.

The extreme weather came from a low-pressure system that has been parked over Central and Southern California. The system was expected to weaken as it drifts northward. Arizona, however, was hit hardest. On Tuesday, storms ripped out trees and broke windows in metropolitan Phoenix, flooded roadways, shut airports and dented cars with hail bigger than golf balls in some places. High winds cast dozens of freight cars off the railroad tracks in Bellemont around 6:30 a.m.

Wednesday. No one was injured, and the cars did not contain any hazardous materials. About 30 homes were so badly damaged that they were uninhabitable and the people who lived in them were evacuated, authorities said. A shelter was set up for them. Minutes before the first tornado in Bellemont touched down, Jeff Cox was standing in his garage, his children nestled in bed.

Rain and hail pounded against the windows and a fierce they also are less likely to make it to the polls than the public at large. Mark Lopez, the organization's associate director, said only a third of Latinos questioned said they have given this year's election "quite a lot" of thought compared with 50 percent of the total population, who said they did in a separate survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. When asked if they definitely intend to vote this year, the response is 70 percent from people overall, compared to 51 percent for registered Hispanics. The Pew study is not broken Arizona typically has four tornadoes of damage seen Wednesday, such as wind made it look like houses were swaying. Then Cox heard a deafening sound and ducked beneath a flatbed trailer carrying two all-terrain vehicles.

The tornado struck, pushing the trailer two feet, tearing off the roof of nearly his entire home and throwing it and other debris into the nearby forest. "It was so loud, it sounded like a big boom," his wife, Jennifer, said through tears, wiping water from collectibles she was trying to salvage. Rain later drenched nearly everything inside. At Brad and Dani Strieker's home, the kitchen cabinets were knocked from the walls, the refrigerator was tipped over, every window in the house was broken and the frame was exposed with drywall and glass down by state. But pollster Earl de Berge of the Phoenix-based Behavior Research Center said studies he has done show the same pattern exists in Arizona.

"Our data has shown over the years that there's somewhere between a 12- to 15-point lower level of turnout among Latinos who are eligible to vote and are registered to vote," de Berge said. He said that has been "a very consistent pattern" over a long time. De Berge said Hispanic voters can be motivated, such as in California "when they've been activated by major candidates running for office or where there have been some Latinos could aid Dems, if motivated to turn out covering the carpet. Brad Strieker said he and his wife were lying in bed when the tornado struck, spraying shat- hostile measures on the ballot." There are no such measures on this year's Arizona ballot. The closest is Proposition 107, which would outlaw affirmative action programs.

But de Berge said he has seen no groundswell of support or opposition on either side of that measure. What that leaves, he said, is whether enactment of SB 1070, the state's tough new law aimed at illegal immigrants, will activate the Hispanic community. "We don't see any strong evidence of that," he said. The Pew survey of 1,375 Latinos 18 and older, including 618 regis Study: Hispanics are less likely to cast ballots nationally By Howard Fischer CAPITOL MEDIA SERVICES PHOENIX Democrats could get a crucial leg up from Latinos if they can motivate them to vote A new national study Tuesday by Pew Hispanic Center finds Latinos are almost three times as likely to be registered as, or call themselves, Democrats as Republicans. And, by 8 to 1, they believe Democrats have more concern for Hispanic issues than the GOP.

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