The Morning Call from Allentown, Pennsylvania • 5

TmR MORNING CALL, ALLENTOWN. PA TUESDAY, JULY PR iigf A5 1 5 Paul Boruch and his wife and children look at their camper that was inside their garage before the tornado hit. i dm It Mft Twister destroyed but didn't kill Continued From Page A1 torn in two. Not a room was left in which they could have hidden. But the Beils were not home at the time.

They had been visiting friends not far away. When the storm went by they went home to see what had happened. "When I came over the hump in the road there I knew I was in trouble," Beil said. What he saw were wires down in the street, fire trucks out front and the remains of his home and garage in a twisted heap. Along Blue Mountain Drive, which runs south from the crossroads at' Danielsville, and Butternut Drive, which runs west from Blue Mountain Drive, the damage was most visible.

Hardly a property escaped without some damage: Roofing torn up, siding ripped off, trees across the roads. At the homes of David Usher and Harry George on Butternut, there was little that was salvageable. "I heard a freight train," Usher said, "I knew what it was, but it took me about 20 seconds to react. I didn't expect it around here." Usher's house was constructed of 12-inch reinforced masonry block, and yet it was wracked beyond repair by the twister. A three-month-old car in his garage was dented all over and the windshield cracked when the garage roof collapsed on it His next-door neighbors, Harry and Kathy George, were in Wildwood, N.

with their two daughters when a neighbor called them to inform them their house had been destroyed. "I was in shock. I was hysterical," Mrs. George said. The shock returned, she said, when she got home this morning and saw the wreckage.

"Thank God we were where we were, or the whole family would have been killed," she said. The tornado also touched down along E. Stateside Drive east of Danielsville. There, dozens of people were out yesterday cutting up the trees that had been felled in just about every yard. One mobile home had its roof badly dented by three massive trunks.

The force of the twister was phenomenal. Paul Boruch lives next door to the Swietzers on Bayberry Drive. He was lucky. Only his garage and patio roof were destroyed. But looking at the damage this morning, there are some things that are just hard to imagine.

About 70 feet of wall from his oversized garage disappeared without a trace. A steel sectional disc unit weighing about 125 pounds that he uses in his vegetable garden was hurled more than 100 feet and up to the second floor of his house, where it left a sizeable gash. His children's swing set nothing more than steel tubing was hurled more than 200 feet and left to rest in the treetops. A heavy steel pump was torn from its bolts next to the above-ground swimming pool and dumped in the water. He had several barrels of kerosene that have disappeared.

The people of Lehigh Township were quick to help their neighbors after the storm hit. The quiet community was abuzz with activity all day yesterday. And while stunned by the force of the twister, they were heartened by the fact that, incredibly, no one was badly hurt. M1W I II IMf I lllllll llllllllHIHllIJi MffllMfftl IT'lTITTr IMFTT 1 The William Sweitzer family (left) spent Sunday night at St. Nicholas Church.

Sweitzers are (I to r) daughters Mindy and Michelle, William and his wife. Berlinsville, after the tornado destroyed their home shown at the right. The Carol. Neighbors of Ronald Graver of Berlinsville give him a hand (left) pushing a car out of a flattened garage. In photo above, Gary Christman (plaid shirt) takes a break from clean-up duties to serve refreshments.

His 2Vi-year-old son escaped serious injury when a roof collapsed on him. Photography by DON UHRICH SftOCBTHS CoMcding pawircstil On Sunday a cold front was moving in from western Pennsylvania, creating an unstable condition as it plowed into the warm air ahead of it. Schmoyer was receiving reports from radar facilities in Harrisburg and Binghampton, N.Y., that detect thunderstorm activity. Although there was no severe weather watch posted for the Lehigh Valley, Schmoyer issued one for Northampton, Monroe and Carbon counties after receiving reports of thunderstorms building southeast of Hazleton and moving from the west-northwest to the east-southeast. It was the lision of two of those storms that spawned the tornado.

The radar operator in Binghamton telephoned to warn about the condition but too late. The tornado had already roared through. Sunday's tornado in northern Northampton County was caused by two medium-strength thunderstorm cells that merged over Walnutport. Dennis Schmoyer, of the National Weather Service, who was on duty Sunday night at the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton Airport and who personally inspected the tornado's damage yesterday, said the twister left a four-five-mile track about 150 feet wide. According to Schmoyer, the tornado touched down at Myrtle Road in Lehigh Township, went aloft just west of the LehighMoore Township boundary and moved over Nazareth and toward Phillipsburg before dissipating.

It was on the ground from about Weather experts agree there is no way to predict whether a tornado will form or hit ground. Charles Gianetta, another weather specialist at the airport, said the recent rash of severe weather (another twister was reported in Northampton County last week, and a thunderstorm with 77 mph winds hit the area June 25) is "freakish" not an indication our weather pattern is changing. "It's just one of those things," Gianetta said. "They're not common around here. The area here is no more prone than in the past 50 years." A survey he quoted showed that from 1953-1971 only 105 tornadoes struck in Pennsylvania.

In the same period, 2,070 were reported in Texas and 1,131 in Oklahoma areas of intense tornado activity. He recalled four or five in the Lehigh Valley in the past 10 years..