Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • 53

53 '42 THE HARTFORD COURANT: Friday, October 5, 1979 ody of Victim Discovered in Rubble lice-said she had apparently been thrown by the strength of the tornado. Her body was identified by her husband, Edmand Dembkoski, who broke into sobs shortly after he was offered condolences by Lt. Gov. William A. O'Neil, a state police chaplain and a neighbor, whose home, like his, also lay in ruins.

Dembkoski and his two sons, Robert, 21, and Thomas, 17, arrived at the ruined site of their four bedroom the piles of wood and rubble trying to pick up pieces of their past. Mrs. Dembkoski, 42, was the second person reported dead as a result of the tornado, which raged through Windsor Locks and the Po-quonock section of Windsor. Mrs. Dembkoski, who had' lived with her husband and two sons on Settler Circle for more than four years, was found by a local man who was digging through rubble and wood in the vicinity.

Po By VIVIAN B. MARTIN WINDSOR The body of a woman whose family had been searching for her since Wednesday's tornado was found lying underneath rubble 110 feet from her home shortly after 2 p.m. Thursday. The discovery of Carole Dembkoski's severely bruised body brought a hush over the ruins of the Colonial Village housing development, where scores of families were digging through close to each other, offering reassurance. Thomas said "things had started going well" for the four, and Dembkoski told of plans to add a garage and other things he wanted to do with the house.

Neighbors took some time from rummaging through their own ruins to comfort the family and reassure them everything would be all right. Eight rescue workers and other neighbors repeatedly asked each other if they believed what was going on. About three hours before his mother's body was found, Robert Dembkoski, who commutes to the University of Hartford to study management, stood holding an af-ghan with a black background and multicolored patches. "My mother made it. She really did," he said, holding it up for display.

"I'm going to hold on to it and give it to daddy and he's going to hold on to it," he said as he walked away to place it in a nearby car where he said it wouldn't get dirty. ed 23 years of the two of us' working and scrounging Now I can't even find my second story." Robert Dembkoski dug through rubble in the house's foundation and on what had been the front lawn. He found a checkbook; a camera and a of pictures, one of which showed a pleasant white colonial home with a Matador station wagon in the driveway. The home, like all but one on Settler Circle, was destroyed. The family collected all the pictures it could find.

Volunteers rushed back and forth trying to locate Mrs. Dembkoski. A crew of Poquonock Fire Company firefighters and other volunteers began sifting through the large piles of wood as the entire area became more crowded with neighbors returning home, emergency crews and sightseers with cameras. A local contractor loaned his crane and town crews used a payloader to dig through the area. The family members stood ill i i if Towers DomvZ I Poquonock Ave.

(Rt. 75) 3radley yffM InternationaLwlrmy National Guard Airport vof ,7 Erjftelicopter Base eD Slf Air Museum Hangar vfd-r4 Bradley Air Museum jjKf Koala lnn Windsor Approximate I t'P'm-Path of Tornado I e' icnk'ec- Colonial Village AT (All markers tt I overturned) f( JglpuonockN. fpm!) School Approximate Wfl Starting Point (H Farmington VA. la: Of Tornado River I Poquonock Ave. A (Rt'75) I I Saved Little Friends A youngster clutches her stuffed animals while sitting Thursday on the foundation of what is left of her home after a tornado hit Pioneer Drive in Windsor (Cour-ant Photo by Judy Griesedieck).

Colonial home about 7 a.m. Thursday. All three, who had been in Bloomf ield at the time of the storm, had spent the evening with friends in Windsor Locks. Mrs. Dembkoski had been at home at the time of the tornado.

The three say they tried contacting her all Wednesday evening. The searchers included Civil Preparedness workers, town crew members and volunteer firefighters, many of whom had combed the area of the family's home until after 2 a.m. Thursday. State police, several of whom stood around the Settler Circle area, brought in bloodhounds to find Mrs. Dembkoski.

When the three family members arrived in town early Thursday they were somewhat optimistic because of a report that Mrs. Dembkoski had been seen leaving the home with a neighbor. The family later heard other rumors that Indicated she was still alive. But Dembkoski had walked slowly as he approached his house Thursday morning. It had been a four-bedroom colonial that could have been sold for $95,000.

Dembkoski, a foreman in a Bloomfield manufacturing company, said it "represent- Storm Won't Halt Services By STEPHANIE SEVICK One of Windsor's oldest churches was severely damage by Wednesday's tornado, but the congregation of the Poquonock Community Church is planning to hold services Sunday. The Rev. James Silver is hoping to hold an ecumenical service of Thanksgiving Sunday at 3 p.m. at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church, Windsor.

Ironically, the two churches are next door to one another, but the Catholic church only suffered little damage. The service schedule is tentative, Silver's wife Janet said Thursday, because it is not yet certain if security measures will be lifted by Sunday so the public can enter the area. The sanctuary the-church was destroyed when the roof of the structure caved in, and the steeple was lost when strong winds tore it from the church. The newest section of the church, built in the late 1950s was as heavily damaged, but Mrs. Silver said it is too small to hold the 330 parishioners.

The parish, which is more than 250 years old, was established in the Poquonock section of Windsor in 1724 so residents of that area would no longer have to make "the long and arduous trip down-, river" to the First Church of -Windsor. Course Is Shown The gray area shows the approximate path of Wednesday's tornado that caused at least two deaths, hundreds of injuries and an estimated $214 million in property damage. Health Officials See Need For Communication Network Forecasters Located Right Under Tornado, Never Spotted Funnel By DAVID RHINELANDER The National Weather Service bureau at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks had no advance warning of Wednesday's tornado because the funnel formed almost on top of the station. "We were almost at ground zero. It started right here," said H.

Roland Laro, supervising meteorologist of the station Thursday. The line of thunderstorms that moved up the Connecticut River valley appeared innocent enough in the early afternoon, he said. Radar trackers in the weather service's national network, in fact, never spotted the twister, even after it hit, Laro said. Satellite photographs don't show the tornado either, Laro said. Since the first indication of trouble came with the tornado itself, the weather bureau didn't issue a tornado warning until after the twister had struck -the Windsor Locks neighborhood.

Forecasters know conditions that are needed for a tornado but don't know just how much of each ingredient it will take to change a thunderstorm into a twister, Laro said. Wednesday's storm, which appears to have been the most violent of the 62 Connecticut torna- does on record since the turn of the century, smashed a path about a quarter of a mile wide and four miles long, Laro said. Tornadoes develop in turbulent thunderstorms when a mass of dry air sweeps in underneath the rain-laden clouds, pushing the moist air up. A narrow band of strong winds must be blowing by at that moment above the storm clouds, Laro said, and they trigger a counter-clockwise spin to the sudden updraft. Tornadoes are the most destructive of all atmospheric phenomena and have winds of from 100 to more than 300 miles per hour in the funnel.

Laro said no measurements were made at the center of the Windsor Locks storm, but damage studies indicate the winds must have topped 150 miles an hour. The Windsor Locks tornado apparently was more severe than the 1962 twister that struck the Waterbury area, killing one person and injuring 50. The upper part of the Connecticut River Valley in Hartford County, the area struck Wednesday, has received 20 of the 62 twisters on record. Litchfield and Tolland counties have had 10 tornadoes each, Fairfield and New Haven counties nine each and Middlesex county, five. New London County has never been struck.

The. relatively hilly terrain and salt-water coast line protect the state from most tornadoes, 1 Laro said. a I I By DAVID H. RHINELANDER After "lucking out" three times in the last two years, the Hartford region must make disaster preparedness a top priority concern, health officials said Thursday. The officials had the highest praise for the efforts of hospital, ambulance, medical, fire, police, rescue, radio and other personnel who mobilized when the tornado struck the Windsor Locks area Wednesday afternoon.

But the twister like the Jan. 29 bus-tanker truck accident on 1-91 that killed three persons and the Jan. 18, 1978 collapse of the Hartford Civic Center coliseum roof into an empty arena points to the region's need for a disaster plan and medical communications network, they said. The countywlde emergency medical services agency does have an ambitious, $1 million communications system planned on paper and an $86,000 federal grant to launch the project. Cressy coordinator of the agency; said with about $30,000 and a few weeks of time, his staff could put a rudimentary system together.

The North Central Connecticut Emergency Medical Services Council is looking for about $150,000 from the region's towns and business community to get the first phase of the larger system in place. With $600,000 instead of $1 million, an adequate network could be established, said Goodwin. Once in place, the system will cost about $150,000 a year to operate 17 cents per capita for Hartford County residents, Goodwin said. "We've lucked our so far. But we should be way beyond the point where all we can say is we got away with it again," said Dr.

Philip A. Stent of St Francis Hospital and Medical Center, president of the emergency services council. "We have to convince the local political communities and the business leadership that we must have the resources for a disaster. Those programs will improve the daily emergency care we can give, as Stent, director of ambulatory services at St Francis. "We were lucky," said Dr.

Charles W. Parton, Mount Sinai Hospital's ambulatory care director. Parton went to the tornado site to coordinate medical services and felt directly the lack of a system to dispatch ambulances and other equipment to specific areas as needed and then route them to specif ic hospitals. Limbs Torn Away Wednesday's tornado took the limbs off the figure of Jesus on this cross in St. Joseph's Cemetery on Poquonock Avenue in Windsor (Courant Photo by Judy ST i 7 i i i.

Expresses Sorrow The Way It Used To Be Mrs. Herbert Weber of 19 Settler Drive, Windsor, holds her head In disbelief and sorrow as she stands Thursday, in what the tornado left of her home (Courant Photo tyMichaeMcAndrews). Sixteen-year-old Scott Boco, son of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph J.

Bosco, holds a photograph of what 30 Settler Circle, Windsor, lqpked like before the tornado struck Wed-nesday (Courant Photo by Michael McAndrews). I A.