The Salina Journal from Salina, Kansas • Page 1

I Coyote howl Kansas Wesleyan upsets coach Dallas' former Suddenly rich Lottery winnings can carry a heavy burden if not managed E1 MONEY Starr looking into Willey tampering, land deals A7 Fflll COlOPS: Autumn puts on a colorful show for admirers B1 INSIDE A High: 69 Low: 43 Sunny today with southwest winds 10 to 15 mph; clear tonight B7 WEATHER Classified C1 Crossword B8 Deaths Great Plains A3 Life B1 Money E1 Sports D1 Viewpoints A4 INDEX the Salina Journal oinoa 1 Serving Kansas since 1871 SUNDAY OCTOBER 18, 1998 SALINA, KANSAS $1.50 YOCEMENTO TORNADO 'There's a tornado on the way' Tiny town devastated by tornado with wind speeds that may have hit 135 mph By DAN ENGLAND The Salina Journal OCEMENTO Edwin J. Dreher didn't mind the moderately strong winds and light rain as he barbecued out back near his Yocemento mobile home. After all, there was meat on the grill, corn on the stove and six friends by his side. Then the phone rang twice and was silent. Dreher checked his caller I.D.

and noticed that his next-door had called. He called back and was stunned by the urgency in his neighbor's voice. "Get your ass over here! There's a tornado on the way!" Dreher stuffed his dog, Tiffany, into a shed, threw his friends in his car, revved the engine and buzzed over to the home about a quarter- mile away. He got out of the car, and as he was running to the front door, he glanced over his shoulder. Two funnel clouds, one of them that Dreher thought was large enough to swallow a half-mile, were racing over the southwest hills and catching up fast.

Dreher, his six friends and the homeowner all stuffed themselves into one of the bathrooms and listened to the water being sucked out of the pipes and what sounded like a train crash over the roof. When it was over, he looked outside the window, and his heart sank. His home was in ruins. "We got out just in time," Dreher said Saturday as he and some friends pawed through broken lumber. "We would have been gone." The residents of this tiny town about five miles west of Hays were dismayed Saturday when they saw what the tornado that seemingly, came out of nowhere had done.

Four homes near Yocemento were destroyed. Several others were damaged moderately. The El- HS County Feedlot was damaged severely. A couple of outbuildings are gOne, and several others were damaged. But as the residents were rebuilding, they were thankful as well.

No one was injured. A college professor returned home, from pizza to find his home practically ruined. A family of four emerged from a storm shelter to find their modular home the town. And Dreher came'back to a home with the corn siill on the stove but a metal roof that was several hundred yards away, a couch with its cushions still in place but no walls surrounding it, and a bedroom that was so obliterated that the only evidence that it even existed was a bed that still was made as if it had never been slept in. Without warning The storm shocked many of the town's residents.

A storm had come through earlier, and all was calm about an hour before the tornado struck a little before 6:30 p.m. Several tanks of anhydrous ammonia were ruptured near the town's grain elevator, and several tanks of propane were damaged, causing a gas leak that forced authorities to evacuate 15 to 20 resi- AGRICULTURE I 1 TOM DORSEY The Salina Journal Edwin Dreher and his friends barely escaped his Yocemento mobile home before Friday's tornado when his neighbor called to tell him the tornado was on the way. TOM DORSEY The Salina Journal Rick Dreher, Plainville, searches Saturday morning for items that can be salvaged from what used to be the living room of his brother Edwin's mobile home in Yocemento. CHARLIE RIEDEL The Hays Daily News LaVerne Unrein watches from his driveway as a pair of tornadoes touch down Friday near Yocemento. dents within a mile radius of the elevator.

They were able to return to their homes'- about midnight. Several other residents were kept from their homes because of the danger of downed power lines. The storm came up quickly and produced several funnels, but the biggest one that caused most of the damage started about 10 miles southwest of Yocemento and sped along pastures before slamming into the small town. Tim Burke, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Dodge City, said the tornado, with its upper rotation and strong land speed of 45 mph, was an intense funnel. The funnel, which carried a mobile home hundreds of yards, which put a steel beam through the living room of one house and flipped a tractor-trailer, may have packed 135 mph winds.

See TORNADO, Page A6 A tornado destroyed homes and damaged a feedlot in Yocemento Friday night. Yocemento Hays ELLIS TOM DORSEY The Salina Journal Rubble is all that remains of the Vernon and Jeanne Riedel family home in Yocemento after Friday night's tornado. As the family huddled in a shelter, the storm carried parts of their home a quarter of a mile. Troubled year leads Democrats to call for change in '96 farm bill Lawmakers advocate return of price supports By JANELLE CARTER The Associated Press WASHINGTON As Congress puts the final touches on more than $6 billion in emergency farm aid, Democratic lawmakers and agricultural experts already are saying changes must be made next year to the 1996 farm bill. "The farm policy that passed the last farm bill is fatally Hawed.

It makes no adjustment for dramatic price declines," said Sen. Kent Con- rad, "If you don't have some buffering mechanism, it leads to a lot of economic wreckage." And economic wreckage is just what lawmakers want to avoid, especially financial disasters that approach the turmoil of this year on the farm. American farmers face their worst financial crisis in more than a decade. The government predicts farm income will drop almost 16 percent this year to $42 billion. A worldwide grain glut has pushed commodity prices to their lowest levels in memory.

In some parts of the country, farmers have been devastated by crop disease and bad weather as well. To help, Congress agreed to include $6 billion in emergency farm aid, along with another $1 billion in farm tax relief, in the overall agriculture spending bill scheduled for passage Tuesday. Many Democrats say more is needed to ease the blow of the 1996 farm bill, which ended decades of government price support safety nets. Under the GOP-pushed "Freedom to Farm" measure of 1996, those subsidies were substituted with aggressive export strategies and free market farm reforms that basically freed farmers to plant based on market conditions. Republicans have rejected any notions of reversing the farm bill and even blocked a Democratic proposal in the farm aid package that would have provided for $5 billion in price supports, saying it was a throwback to the days before the 1996 farm bill.

But even some of their number rec- ognize problems with the legislation. "I don't know of any farm bill yet that's been a total success," Rep. John Thune, said Saturday. Thune was among a small group of Republicans who advocated this session instituting some type of price supports for farmers. "This might make some of my Republican colleagues squeamish," he said, but "unless Congress is willing to write big checks" for emergency bailouts it may have to consider price supports..