Calgary Herald from Calgary, Alberta, Canada • 2

A2 CALGARY HERALD Monday, July 28, 1997 ggWW 5 ufl6ft mint ft 33,. 5r7 TORNADO from PAGE Al Fourteen died as tornado ripped through trailer park Many who lived in the five per cent of Edmonton in the path of the tornado would prefer to forget. "We're getting tired of the phone calls and the media," says Wendy Chrisp, whose son, now 10, was paralysed below the waist when the tornado fractured his skull and shattered his spine. "Some say the 10th anniversary is needed; others say, 'Just leave us says Teresa Young, president of the Evergreen Community League. The tornado killed 14 people as it ripped through Evergreen Mobile Home Park in northeast Edmonton.

Some Evergreen survivors weep when they talk about the death and destruction. "We just hope the 10th anniversary will put closure on it," says Young. Marin Athanasopoulos still scans the skies on muggy summer days, look At 2:55 p.m., the winds inside one of as the winds flattened large industrial buildings and blew semi-trailers ar ing for another funnel cloud. "We're all cloud watchers now," says Athanasopoulos, a former president of the Tornado Survivors Association. Environment Canada was tracking several violent thunderstorms that day, as they moved in from the southwest.

Shortly before noon, the local office issued a severe-weather warning. the thunderclouds spun wildly and a funnel cloud dropped to Earth, two kilometres south of Beaumont. As the tornado drifted north, it ripped the roofs off houses in Mill Woods but killed no one. Its size and fury built as it drifted through the industrial zones of east Edmonton and Strath-cona County, until wind speeds hit nearly 420 km-h. Thirteen people died ound like cardboard boxes.

The tornado weakened slightly as it knifed through Clareview, where it damaged 463 homes and destroyed 37 others. Because most people took shelter in their houses, no one died. That wasn't the case at Evergreen. The tornado destroyed 126 of the park's 723 mobile homes. ji A 1 JIM FARRELL Edmonton Journal EDMONTON i m.

ir Ic (6 ll rc fi) OJ 1 9 t.9 1 '0 --a I If thing had sucked him out the window." "We saw Jeremy's mother and we called to her, but she was a total basket case. I could feel my own hysteria rising. I could feel these screams rising in my throat, but I thought, I can't cry, because if I do, the children will know there's something wrong. I have to stay calm so they'll think nothing's wrong." Athanasopoulos arrived at the lot where a good friend had lived and found only a pile of rubble. With her baby still in her arms, she screamed and began to dig.

A man approached her and told her to stop and take care of her own children. She stopped. She resumed her trek and arrived at the entrance to the park. Almost an hour had passed since the tornado. A city bus pulled up and Evergreen's survivors were told to get in.

Athanasopoulos put her children on board to be taken to hospital. Athanasopoulos looked out the bus window and saw a man run up with a bleeding and bruised baby. She recognized the week-old infant as Kristen, Monique Gregoire's baby Monique, like Kelly Pancel, had babysat for Athanasopoulos. The hurricane had torn Kris-ten out of her mother's arms as the Gregoire's trailer was torn to pieces. Athanasopoulos ran outside and grabbed the infant.

The man said the baby was dying. Athanasopoulos hesitated. "I didn't want to take her on the bus, because I didn't want her dying in front of my kids," she says. "Then the baby started gurgling, her eyes rolled back in her head and she stopped breathing." Athanasopoulos shoved a finger down the baby's throat. The infant gagged, vomited, then breathed.

Athanasopoulos spotted a police officer in a car. She ran over and handed him the baby Bob Clark's story: 5:00 p.m. WRECKAGE: Clint Keates leads insurance adjuster Pat O'Hara (left) through his home at the Evergreen Trailer Park on July 31, 1987 vIJUiUIllU lornacfegiattered mobile homes, lives 4:05 p.m., July 31, 1987 Marin Athanasopoulos stepped out of the shattered remains of her mobile home and into a scene that was straight out of hell. She Med not to scream. Evergreen Mobile Home Park had disappeared.

In its place was a bombed-out field of trash. "People were growing out of the rubble," says Athanasopoulos. "I wondered what the hell this was. Then I got it. I'd seen this on television.

That movie about the morning after the bomb landed. That's it. We'd been bombed." But Edmonton seemed an unlikely target for a Soviet nuclear attack. Athanasopoulos' thoughts darted from one unlikely possibility to another, then pounced on a more likely idea. "I'm an actress.

I'm in the movie. But what's my next line?" Looking for a prompter, she spotted her four children: Eleven-year-old Robert was beside her, carrying his 10-month-old brother Kosta. There was George, 5. She looked dowrcTwo-yearold Joseph was in her arms. That wasn't right.

The kids didn't belong in this scene. "I thought, there's no way I would be in a TV movie with my kids. This 'is real. Then I remembered. This was a tornado." 8 p.m, July 30, 1987 It was unusually hot and muggy during the last week of July 1987.

As the sun dropped lower in the sky, Athanasopoulos and 19-year-old Kelly Pancel gaped at the seething, boiling clouds. "It was as if the Rocky Mountains were sailing past. Kelly wanted to go home, but I said stay and watch it this is beautiful." Pancel didn't live in the parfc She was visiting her father. She'd meant to go home that evening, but Athanasopoulos had given her a box of clothes for her three-week-old baby. Pancel decided to spend another night and go home the next day.

The delay cost Pancel her life. That evening, Sister Joan McCall was taking in the show at the other end of the park. "There was a spectacular lightning show on the horizon," says McCall, who was visiting friend Millie Murray "It was like someone was playing ball up there, with all of the clouds moving in a circular direction." 3:30 p.m., July 31, 1987: By mid-afternoon thunderclouds blossomed again on the southern horizon and moved toward Edmonton. One hundred metres west of Athanasopoulos's mobile home, Brenda Trendall and her husband hurried to bring in their groceries. "It started to turn dark and I told Doug there was rain coming.

He said to close the windows." Across the street, TrendaU's neighbor Marvin Reimer was working on his yellow pickup. Reimer gazed at the sky and put down his tools. Just before he went inside his mobile home, he spotted Trendall. He waved, then went to join his two daughters and son. Marvin's wife, Arlean, should have been home from work but she was late.

Her tardiness saved her life, Trendall says. She would have died alongside her husband and three children as the tornado tore their mobile home to shreds. 3:34 p.m. Evergreen Mobile Home Park lost its electricity. The tornado snapped high-voltage towers in East Edmonton as it moved north at 35 km-h.

McCall was taking pictures of an approaching black wall. A week later, when she got her photos back and put two of them together, she noticed it wasn't a black wall. It was an immense funnel. 3:55 p.m. The tornado chewed up the southeast City News Facts on the Edmonton tornado million to one" panada 5 Wind speed: Up to 416 km-h! Quote: "The tornado was the biggest disaster that ever hit Edmonton.

But in terms of the people, the helping and the support and the giving, it was really our finest hour." Heather Airth, director of the Edmonton Emergency Services Society. Casualties: 2f injured: Damage: $330 mtlhon, 60,000 insurance claims filed. Hall: Ice chunks as big as tennis balls fell.OD 140 square kilometres of city. Two people knocked out. Tornado's path: Whipped along eastern edge of city, 40 kilometres long and up to one kilometre wide.

Hit CN Rail line, oil tanks. Demolished Evergreen Mobile Home Park. Statistic; "The Odds of dying from a tornado are 12 File photo. Edmonton Journal the wreckage of what used to be were killed. Some homes enveloped by the" funnel were spared, however.

Weather experts say the funnel contained several intense vortices. They apparently passed on either side of the Athanasopoulos and Trendall homes and the Reimer's tool shed. "Only a single window pane was broken out of it," Trendall says. 4:05 p.m. A deathly silence enveloped Evergreen Park.

"I remember thinking, thank you God, we're all dead. I could hear them all. The baby is crying, the kids are crying, and so we're all dead." But something didn't fit. Throughout the trailer park, natural gas was spewing from ruptured lines. Water poured from shattered mains, adding to the downpour which followed the tornado.

Athanasopoulos and her children began digging their way out of their trailer. "Finally we cold see outside and it was just like a bomb." When Athanasopoulos came to her senses, she stuffed her children in one of the remaining rooms of her trailer, shoved a bed and crib against the door to keep them in, then went outside to look for her neighbors. The first person she encountered was blood-covered nine-year-old Jeremy Crytes. "Jeremy said some Opinion 1 Ik JJ i o. I fj.

01 a 9'j-: 9'1 11 -a -v i )z. )l inside her mobile home and shouted to her son to get the keys to her car so she could move it away from the house. "The next thing I remember, I was running down the hall. It was all black outside, the windows were smashing in and there was the sound of a train or an airplane, right outside the house. Two by fours were flying right through the walls.

Then my son said, 'Here are the keys, Athanasopoulos grabbed the keys, slammed them on to the freezer, handed her three-month-old baby to Robert and darted into a wing of her trailer. She grabbed her two-year-old son, Joseph, from his bed and backed out of the addition, just as the roof caved in. A mobile home had landed on the addition. "My kids were screaming, wanting to know what was going on, wanted to know if we were going to die," Athanasopoulos says. "I was praying to God that if some of us die, we all die.

'Please God, don't leave one of my babies to wake up in this mess and find his mother and brothers The tornado knifed through Evergreen Park. Most homes within its funnel blew apart, including the Reimers' and the home owned by Kelly Pancel's father. Marvin Reimer, his three children and Pancel Acting Sgt. Bob Clark tried to figure out how to keep Kristen Gregoire alive. "I got a yellow survival blanket out of the trunk of my car and wrapped her up.

I could see her chest moving, so I knew she was breathing." Clark radioed for an ambulance. "The reply I got was that we don't have any. They're all tied up." He and his partner rounded up four wounded adults and told them to get into their cruiser. As Clark drove to the hospital, weaving through stalled traffic and bouncing along the grassy median, the baby on his lap, Clark repeatedly pulled on Kristen's fingers and toes. "She would wince, so I knew she was still alive." The woman beside Clark screamed continuously at the top of her lungs until the cruiser arrived at Royal Alexandra Hospital.

The trip seemed to take an eternity Roadways in northeast Edmonton were littered with broken trees and downed power lines. Every underpass was flooded. Kristen survived. The aftermath: When Clark finally got home at the end of an 18-hour shift, he went into his infant son's room, reached out his hand and touched the sleeping three-month-old. He thought how lucky he was.

Arlean Reimer had arrived home earlier. Using a large crane, emergency workers hoisted the remains of her trailer so she could salvage her three dead children's cabbage-patch dolls. She found her husband's wedding ring on top a crushed dresser, exactly where she'd seen it when she left for work that morning. 6 p.m., July 71997: A reporter has called Ron Sheplawy, Reimer's fiance, to ask for an interview. This is a bad time for Arlean, Sheplawy explains.

July is always a bad time, and it gets worse as the end of the month approaches. In the background, the reporter can hear Reimer saying the same thing, over and over again. "I can't," she says in a soft voice. "I can't. I can't.

I just can't." jL Calgary Herald ONLINE http:www.calgarytierald.com Newspaper Rates Monthly home delivered in Calgary HA.li Monthly home delivered oy. Motor Route $17.00 Single-copy' Thur. Sat. $1.00 Prices differ outside Calgary city limits. Daily mailed In Canada annually Daily mailed outside Cwada $1,466.00 annually Rates include applicable GST MemDei of Audit Bureau of Circulation 7.

it ll f' al rn te if 1 8 if if 9 i I i i end of Evergreen. The wind in the northwest corner of the park rose to unbearable levels, so McCall called it quits, grabbed her camera and tripod, bent over and battled her way into the back door of Murray's home. "Then I noticed some pink insulation floating through the air," she says. Millie froze, then screamed "that's a tornado!" McCall pulled her friend in by the back door, then paced. "I just kept walking in small circles from the living room to the dining room, then through the small kitchen.

I was waiting to die." Trendall and her husband threw their children down on to the floor of their mobile home and jumped on top of them. Minutes before, Athanasopoulos had been watching the approaching storm through the windows of her home. "We were watching these clouds going round and round, then the roof blew off a house down the street and I started to laugh, thinking boy, is he going to be mad when he comes home." Athanasopoulos ducked outside, picked up her children's toys off the back porch and carried them to the shed. As she closed the shed door, the wind lifted its roof off and sent it tumbling across the ground. Athanasopoulos fought her way back Switchboard 235-7100 Reader sales service For Convenient Home Delivery Call Fn.

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