Press and Sun-Bulletin from Binghamton, New York • 3

TORNADO OUTBREAK '98 Press Sun-Bulletin 3A Tuesday, June 2,1998 Otsego residents work to reclaim lives amid Mass to remember Oneonta man killed by falling tree limb ways. "One hundred year's worth of growth was over in 60 seconds," he said. "Trees were splitting off and spinning in the air. It was quick, but almost like slow motion," he said. He yelled to his family to get into the basement as a roar "like a train" rose.

One entire orchard was devoured, as well as 400 poplar, red and white pine and spruce trees. "It was the woods of my dreams," Ravenelle said, showing where the tornado skipped the next hill before it flattened a barn on the other side, rose into the county, uprooting hundreds of trees, breaking branches anddamaginghouses.mobile homes and farms. Eight camps at Silver Lake were thrown like tinker toys, and two mobile homes in Portlandville were overturned. Jones said the first storm came about 3 p.m., significantly damaging the northern end of the county. p.m., the second wave came through, with the tornado activity.

The third front at 8:30 p.m. brought with it thunder and lightning that started two structure fires. Oneonta, who was killed when a tree limb crushed him in his back yard. Otsego County Coroner James Hurley said Simms died of massive chest bleeding, as well as head and neck injuries. Six were injured during the windstorm, one by a falling limb, one by broken glass, two struck by lightning and two with bumps and bruises.

Otsego County Emergency Services Coordinator Lyle "Butch" Jones said one confirmed tornado with an indiscriminate appetite traveled across the center of the BY LINDA JUMP Staff Writer The drone of the chain saw filled Otsego County Monday as public works crews and residents cleaned up from a series of storms that killed a man, injured at least six and damaged 90 structures. A state of emergency remains in effect through Friday. Some roads were impass Otsego damage severe Monday, State Emergency Management Office officials joined Jones in viewing damage. The National Weather Service confirmed at least two tornadoes, the strongest one cutting a destructive path from Laurens to Milford beginning around 6:30 p.m. Jones said no dollar figure on damage is available yet.

Oneonta Postmaster Gary Ravenelle of County Route 49 watched a greenish funnel cloud gobble up a decades-long dream for a 30-acre woodland area with walk 1.1 53 A teri 2f Chenango County damage expected to top $1 million I I JL hi h-f'M get-" to? JgT ti IMJ ir-J rmT V' fit able Monday night, but offi cials planned to reopen schools Tuesday, including Oneonta and Cooperstown. Drivers doubled back as they encountered downed wires and trees. To get from South Edmeston to Edmeston, generally a few-mile drive, required an eight-mile detour. A Mass will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Thursday in St.

Mary's Church, Oneonta, for Robert Dale Simms, 32, of four miles away from the reservoir, near South Plymouth. "We could see it circling. I said to my father, 'Doesn't it look like a It was a big dark mass just circling over the area," she said. City of Norwich Police Chief Joseph Angelino and Patrolman Robert Gesslein had pulled into a city parking lot to discuss the impending storm when Angelino saw the Plymouth storm. "We could see dark sky and grayish sky coming together and then suddenly as they joined you could see a funnel-like tail reaching earthward," said Angelino.

The funnel at the Plymouth Reservoir appeared to have entered the middle of the water before moving to land. Fronts of buildings were covered with mud that residents said was thrown from the reservoir by the tornado. "There is no doubt if this had happened last weekend it would have been much worse. Because of the holiday, most of the homes and camps here were filled," said Plymouth volunteer firefighter Matt Bates. Cleanup work started Monday morning with highway crews from the towns of Plymouth and Norwich hauling away trees, tree branches and foliage by the truck load.

"I would expect we would be there working most of the week," said Plymouth Highway Superintendent James A. Sanford Sr. New York State Gas Electric Corp. crews are expected to begin erecting new utility poles today to restore power to the camps and homes. Some people were still trying to cut their way through the wreckage to their homes late Monday.

1 r''' -'-5. DAVE KENNE0Y staff photographer This trailer was blown over by a tornado Sunday evening near the owner, Sherry Tyler, was still inside. Tyler apparently escaped with-town of Portlandville, along Route 28 north of Oneonta, while its out injury, according to a neighbor. BY JIM WRIGHT Staff Writer PLYMOUTH Tornado and storm damage Sunday in Chenango County will exceed $1 million, said Emergency Management Director John E. Windsor.

Chenango County will remain in a state of emergency through 5 p.m. today. The state was initiated at 5 p.m. Sunday by Board of Supervisors Chairman Richard B. Decker.

The worst damage occurred to homes on the south shore of Plymouth Reservoir. Thirty-nine of the 41 homes and camps surrounding the water were damaged; three, including a trailer owned by James and Patricia Woodard that was tossed off its foundation, were destroyed. The Woodards were not at their seasonal residence Sunday only because their son, Jim, was attending a birthday party. A lone tree, its top snapped off, stood next to the Woodards' trailer and may have saved their neighbors. The tree stopped the steel frame of Woodard's trailer from crashing into their neighbor's home.

Initial estimates placed the damage at Plymouth Reservoir at $658,000, said town Supervisor Donald P. Franklin. The rest of the county saw pockets of damage, but not all towns have reported their damage yet. County officials hope the tally will be enough to draw a disaster-area declaration and eligibility for state and federal emergency funding. Nine-year-old Sabrina Meyers will remember May 31, 1998.

She watched the storm from her home three to rubble air again and touched down to lift the gas pumps from a Quickway Convenience Store a few miles away. Thousands spent their second day without power, some without telephone service. Edmeston issued a boil-water advisory. LuAnn Fuller and other neighbors on South Edme-ston's Main Street remained isolated Monday, with trees blocking the roadway in both directions. She and her family fled to the cellar three different times as each storm passed.

Storms rip across Apalachin Tioga Terrace takes hard hit BY CONNIE NOGAS Staff Writer APALACHIN Sunday's violent storm blew open the doors to Lance Bowe's Apalachin home, shattered mirrors, glass chandeliers and ceilings and threw a grandfather clock across a room, knocking a hole in the wall. "We had glass from chandeliers flying all over the place," he said. "It actually took a door and exploded it through a door jamb." The storm also blew the slide to their child's swing set into the bushes and sent their trampoline bouncing to a neighbor's yard. Bowe, his wife and two of their three children were upstairs; one daughter wasn't home. "Which was fortunate.

If everybody was down on the first floor where all the glass was flying around, somebody could have been hurt," Bowe said. Bowe, of 199 Gatewood Blvd, was among several Tioga Terrace residents believed to have been hardest hit by severe storms that tore through Tioga and surrounding counties. Tioga County sneriff deputies said trees and power lines were knocked down all over the county, but no injuries were reported. Damage didn't appear severe enough to warrant federal aid through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Richard LeCount, director of Tioga County Emergency Management. He surveyed the damage at Tioga Terrace Monday with Town Supervisor Carol Sweeney, Councilman Bruce Brent, Highway Superintendent David Ferris and Tioga County Legislature Chairwoman Frances Leavenworth, R-Apalachin.

The morning after the storm, chain saws buzzed in Tioga Terrace as what was left of the damaged trees was removed. Downed trees still littered many front and back yards. Roofs had lost many shingles, and some houses had siding peeled away. One car on Elmwood Drive was trapped but not crushed under a tree that fell on it. Kurt Koehler of 198 Gate-wood lost about eight trees, including one that landed only three inches from his deck.

"I fully expected we were going to have this stuff come down on the house," Koehler said as he cleared away branches. "I have been through three or four hurricanes on Long Island, but I have neverseen anything like this." Three trees were still on top of Barbara and Bill Hush's garage at 197 Gatewood Blvd. on Monday morning. "The trees hit the house with a big bang," Barbara Hush said. "It (the storm) opened the windows and threw glass and dirt from the house next door into the family room." Their next-door neighbor, Bowe, saw the storm coming as he looked out his bathroom window.

"I saw the wind start picking up and all of a sudden, I saw a tree snap," he said. "Then I saw our pool furniture getting sucked up. That's when I yelled: 'Tornado! Everybody down to the Despite all the mess to clean up, Tioga Terrace residents were counting their blessings Monday. "We are thankful that nobody got hurt," Bill Hush said. "Everything is replaceable but people aren't." Sno -H rubble Mechanicvill residents com i sa After taking a long look at his family's trailer in the Riverside Village Mobile Home Park north of Portlandville, Craig Briggs, 4, and his cousin Tracy Briggs turn and walk away.

As they go Craig repeats to himself in a sad, quiet voice, 'My trailer's broke, my trailer's Bit fL Er? ait? A woman looks for belongings to salvage among the wreckage of her home in Mechanicville Monday. exposed because one wall was ripped off the house, was a pot of spaghetti sauce Luciano had left as he rushed to his basement for safety when the tornado approached. He and his wife crawled out of the house through a basement window. With the help of several teen-agers, Luciano was salvaging compact discs, stereo equipment and televisions. "Hey, it's something," he said as he clutched the discs.

He pulled a pair of ski pants from the wreckage. "I have a hundred-dollar pair of hiking pants," he said as he pulled a pair of ski pants from the wreckage. "I wish I could have found them." p. of Broome County. "It looks like someone took a bulldozer across the top of the mountain; everything was gone," village patrolman Joe Santamaria said.

"Trees were snapped in half, and telephone poles were sheared off just a lot of debris in the air. It was just nasty." After touring the hardest-hit housing development in Mechanicville and consoling residents who were toting armfuls of belongings like refugees, Gov. George Pataki declared states of emergency in Broome, Rensselaer, Otsego and Saratoga counties. That state designation makes the areas eligible for federal disaster relief funds. "It looks like a war zone, like there was an explosion," Pataki said incredulously as he surveyed the damage from a state helicopter some 800 feet above the ground.

Police in Mechanicville allowed residents to return to their homes for about a half-hour Monday to carry out whatever possessions they could find in the twisted debris that was left of their homes. Police were then cordoning off the area to prevent looting. One of Miranda's neighbors, Dominic Luciano, returned home to find that only his garage had been untouched by the tornado. The rest of his house was a mangled mass of pink insulation, soggy clothes and other personal items. On the kitchen stove, Owners dredge for possessions BY CHRIS CAROLft Associated Press MECHANICVILLE Returning Monday to the aftermath of the tornado that pummeled their homes, some residents cried while picking through debris, others made jokes to cope with the shattering sense of loss.

Most, like Michael and Denise Miranda, had escaped to their basements just seconds before the twister started tearing houses apart Sunday afternoon and then had fled with the warning of another approaching storm. "We'll start all over again, I guess," Michael Miranda said. The second-floor apartment that he and his wife had remodeled over his mother's first-floor home was torn off. "It makesyou feel real small in the world when Mother Nature comes through," said Michael, 39, who had seen a bad storm before he was on a deep-sea fishing trip when Hurricane Bob struck Florida in 1991. "This was scarier than Hurricane Bob," he said.

Dozens of homes were destroyed or severely damaged in the 300-foot path that the tornado cut across the small Hudson River city that once was busy with paper mills. From the air, the tornado's ASSOCIATED PRESS These homes were destroyed in the northern sec- nado. Residents were allowed back into their homes tion of Mechanicville during a Sunday afternoon tor- Monday to salvage personal items. a ia ir iiMiliirrn- Other injury reports were numerous, but none appeared life-threatening. Two people were struck by lightning, but both survived.

Several schools in the affected counties were scheduled to be closed Tuesday while power crews worked. Roads were slowly being cleared. At least eight houses and a mobile home were leveled in Deposit at the eastern edge course was clearly visible as a swath of crumbled homes and flattened trees stretched nearly two miles from railroad tracks in northern Mechanicville across the Hudson River to rural Rensselaer County. Outside the tornado's track, homes appeared untouched. Other funnel clouds were reported Sunday all across the state as far west as the Buffalo area.

About 65,000 cus tomers were without power Monday afternoon, mostly in counties surrounding Albany, according to the State Emergency Management Office. Power companies said all customers would have electricity restored by Wednesday. Though there were no serious injuries near Albany, one man died in Oneonta when a tree limb fell on him as he worked outside building a shed..