Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 9

PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3, 1998 TOIli ASUKDER I- I i i i If I it Steve MellonPost-Gazette Twisters have deadly history in region By Jonathan D. Silver Post-Gazette Staff Writer Residents of Western Pennsylvania are hardly strangers to the type of de-. struction visited by tornadoes like the ones that spun havoc throughout the region yesterday. Since World War II, there have been at least seven events involving major twisters, including yesterday's activity, that have left death, millions of dollars in property damage and terror in their wake. In June 1944, four tornadoes devastated Western Pennsylvania and eastern West Virginia, killing 153 people and injuring 362.

Counted among the dead were 17 Allegheny County residents. The village of Montrose, W.Va., was obliterated. Tornadoes and severe storms in July 1976 thundered through several counties, flattening 30 homes in Clover Hill Estates, a housing development on the northern outskirts of Latrobe. Three people were killed, including one woman who was lifted 150 feet into the air and dropped into a neighbor's yard. There were 21 reported injuries.

On June 3, 1980, nine tornadoes ripped through four counties in Western Pennsylvania, leaving a 50-mile-long trail of damage. One man was killed when a tree struck by lightning fell on him. In the Edgewood Estates Trailer Park in Apollo, 77 trailers were destroyed and 46 were damaged. With winds swirling at nearly 200 mph, a tornado ripped through a shopping complex in Natrona Heights, injuring 42 people. In May 1983, a Westmoreland County tornado whirling at speeds of 100 mph injured at least 10 people and left hundreds home-.

less. -Two years after that, on May 31, 1985, came a cluster of tornadoes that indelibly etched themselves into the annals of deadly regional twisters by killing 88 people, injuring more than 1,000 and damaging more than $450 million in property in Western Pennsylvania, northeastern Ohio, western New York and southern Canada. Seventeen of those tornadoes hit Pennsylvania, tearing through 13 counties, including Beaver and Butler. In Wheatland, Mercer County, more than 40 families lost their homes when a twister with winds exceeding 260 mph churned through the downtown. For the most part, the 1990s have been kind to Western Pennsylvania in terms of widespread destruction caused by tornadoes.

But the twister that sliced through Salisbury, Somerset County, Sunday was an exception. Packing winds of more than 150 mph, it killed a teen-age girl, destroyed 43 houses and rendered another 37 uninhabitable over a 15-mile-long stretch. ft '0, xwut: TWllKlNSBURCr: 1 4AiT. lVtifoi, ptiiS if as -toWWSfr yy- 1 James Carraway A patrol car becomes a makeshift raft as Wilkinsburg patrol officer Don Hamlin, 32, smiles sheepishly for a fellow officer. Hamlin was on his way to help residents on West Street around 6:30 last night when his car stalled and then flooded in the rapidly rising water.

yi' i 'I. '1" Jeannine Borelli holds her head as she listens to ra-' dio coverage of the storm that ripped off the third floor of her house on Wil-', liam Street on the north slope of Mount ton yesterday evening. In the background are her: daughter Amy Borelli, 20, left, and neighbor Audrey Krugh. hurt. He even joked about it "We don't have a river, we don't have a creek, we don't have a stream, but I almost drowned in Wilkinsburg," Hamlin said.

Bellevue Fire Chief Charlie Am-, rhein was presenting a plaque to a firefighter at last night's borough council meeting when the town's police chief came in with a worried look on his face. Chief Michael Bookser i pered in Amrhein's ear, "You've got 12 minutes, Charlie. A tornadoes coming." Amrhein quickly wrapped up his presentation and council adjourned its meeting, ushering the audience of about 25 people to the basement of the borough building for safety until the storm passed. In Pitcairn, worried residents, kept one eye on the weather and another on the streets. Memories of the flash floods that devastated Pitcairn and Monroe ville in July 1997 are still fresh in the minds of many.

While the rain did bring flooding, it was nothing of the sort that caused millions of dollars of dam- age last year. "Vie had a couple of basements flooded, but that's all," a Pitcairn police officer said last night. Duquesne University's radio station, WDUQ-FM, was knocked off -the air at 6:20 p.m. when the storm cut off electrical power to its transmitter on Mount Washington. The station, located at 90.5 FM, will be off the air indefinitely until: power is restored, station spokes-! woman Cynthia Ference-Kelly said.

Shoppers at the Wal-Mart on Route 19 in Cranberry weren'talr lowed to leave the store when the storm approached around 8 p.m. Instead, store employees ordered.all to the ladies' clothing area in the middle of the then directed them to sit in a hud-1, die on the floor. "Everyone was petrified," said shopper Georgia Hopkins, 79, of Mercer, who had been shopping with her grandchildren. Some people in the huddle were so frightened they began to sob, she said. Shoppers weren't allowed to move for about 30 minutes.

Mike Sarnelli hosted state troopers and volunteer firefighters who, ducked into his market in Donegal to avoid the storms. He said the troopers had been, out on the roads when the first bad storm came through. But when the second storm hit, they decided to take cover. Suddenly, his basement was filled with uniforms, he said. Sarnelli said Route 711 was closed by a tree that fell across the road, wiping out the power lines with it.

Heather Gavlick, 24, of Green Tree, was headed to the Pirates game last night when she got phone message saying people needed her help. Gavlick, a new volunteer for the American Red Cross, canceled her, plans, donned her Red Cross T-shirt and headed to the office. It was the first time she was called out by the organization she didn't know what to expect "When I got the call saying thejt-i needed volunteers Dast night thought it was a good chance tdgel some experience." Gavlick was stationed at Bra- shear High School, where a shelter" for Mount Washington residents was opened. No one showed up, but as Red Cross spokesman Mike Stack point: ed out, the situation was one where many people felt mtre comfortable staying with relatives, or at home. MM "I saw the roof of a building impaled on a street sign," he said.

The roof was ripped off and had sailed a block before landing on the sign. "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it." On his way home to Shadyside from his job in Kittanning, Mark Denovich drove over the Highland Park Bridge, turned onto Washington Boulevard and found there was more water than pavement. Heavy rains had led to the flooding of a grassy area along the boulevard normally reserved for pickup athletic games. "The water was blowing out of a storm sewer," Denovich, 24, said. "It was blowing three or four feet in the air." In the midst of the new lake, an abandoned brown car floated, water up past the door handles.

As Denovich watched, a tow truck driver tried to lend a hand. He drove the truck into the water until it stalled, leaving him stranded. Shortly after, Denovich saw an 18-wheeler back up toward the tow-truck driver as far as it could through the pool. The driver jumped into the water, was hauled into the back of the semi and taken headed toward Mount Washington. All officers are to abandon their posts and take cover." Two motorcycle patrolmen pushed onlookers inside the incline building and down the steps to the basement.

They could see the low clouds swirling horizontally, waiting for the funnel to "go vertical." Conversation was slight as the winds rose outside and the skies grew very dark. By 8:15 p.m., the danger had passed and the group left its mountainside haven. Mayor Murphy was running on the new Second Avenue trail toward the city when he saw the approaching storm. It had just started to rain as he entered the City-County Building. When he learned that a tornado had touched down in his city, he couldn't believe it.

"We've never had a tornado in Pittsburgh," he said with an incredulous expression on his face. "That's what my parents told me." Murphy rode to Hazelwood and Mount Washington after the storm to see the damage. He said he was amazed at the damage on Mount Washington. District residents weather evening Suzanne Filiaggi of 416 Olympia Road heard the wind rise outside -her townhouse at historic Chatham Village on Mount Washington shortly before 6 last night. She felt a few drops of rain when she went outside to move her car to the garage about 20 yards away.

The ride was a short one. Filiaggi drove a few yards when a tree fell across the road. Then the real trouble arrived. "I heard the tree crunching as the wind tore it from the hillside and I saw it falling on my car. I crouched down as far as I could when the tree hit.

I was trapped inside the car. The front doors wouldn't open. "I crawled over the back seat and got out through the back door. It was freaky," she said. Filiaggi was not hurt, but was worried that her crushed car might be in the way, since it blocked Olympia Road.

She needn't have worried. Chatham Village, a picture-perfect housing development known for its immaculate groundskeeping and floral finery, was now a jungle of downed trees and branches, power lines tilting toward the ground, slates with sharp edges stuck in the turf, broken glass and more crunched cars. No one would be driving down Olympia Road. In a scene somewhat reminiscent of the hours after the crash of USAir Flight 427 but without that devastating loss of life KDKA, WTAE and WPXI scrapped network and syndicated programming last night. They stayed on the air for hours, issuing tornado watches and warnings, and advising viewers to leave the video cameras alone and head for the basement, preferably with pillows and blankets.

It was a night when high-tech equipment fancy storm-tracking devices and helicopters and low-tech equipment phones and stationary cameras such as the one Channel 2 has perched atop the nearby Pittsburgh Hilton and Towers paid off. In what almost seemed like time-lapse photography, KDKA's camera showed lightning flashing over Downtown and then dense rain clouds rumbling in over the city like a deadly fog. During its 6 p.m. news, it had a wide shot of Mount Washington that depicted ominous twin funnel-shaped clouds hovering over the hillside like that alien spaceship in the film "Independence Day." Two police officers, Monongahe-la Incline personnel, a few residents and a news reporter spent 15 minutes in the basement of the incline building on Mount Washington as a second funnel cloud formed at about 8 last night. The police radio crackled a warning: "A funnel cloud is coming down the Parkway West and is This story was reported by staff writers Ernie Hoffman, Gretchea McKay, Johnna A.

Pro, Bill Schackner, Jonathan D. Silver, Tom Sterling, Matthew P. Smith, Barbara Vancheri and Lawrendt Walsh. stormy B- "1 to dry land. When calls from frantic West Street residents began pouring into the Wilkinsburg police station last night, Officer Don Hamlin wheeled his patrol car around and headed over to the block between Penn and Kelly avenues.

Ahead of him, near the Kelly School, Hamlin could see that the occupants of a truck appeared to be stopped as water from backed up storm sewers swirled in the street around them. Hamlin pulled his patrol car forward intent on helping them. And then it happened. In seconds, the water began rising and pouring into his vehicle, nearly trapping the officer. "The water just started rising.

The car stalled and then the water flooded the interior. Everything went dead," Hamlin said. With his radio equipment shorted out, Hamlin climbed out the window and onto the roof of the car. Using his portable radio, he called for help. Wilkinsburg firefighters rescued Hamlin after he spent about 45 minutes atop his car.

Except for his pride, he wasn't Matt FreedPost-Gazette clear debris from their garage roof carport torn away and windows blown VVVVKV 1 HV Wyoming I County storm kills 2 By The Associated Press TUNKHANNOCK, Pa. Two people were killed when a tornado apparently touched down in rural northeastern Pennsylvania, knocking down hundreds of trees and trapping several people in their houses, a Wyoming County official said. "We're not OK up here," County Commissioner Ron Williams said early today from an emergency post. "It appears that a tornado did touch down and went right across the top of our county." The heaviest damage, and the fatalities, occurred in the town of Lake Carey. The victims' identities were not immediately available.

It was unclear how many people were injured. "We have approximately 600 to 700 trees uprooted and down," Williams said. The fallen trees hampered efforts to get to the (ermmunirv's residents, and rescu-. ffcfs were checking houses by 1 Ht i ''v' t. v.

Rod Williams helps his neighbors, Elsie and Jim McKinney, of Raccoon, last evening. The McKinneyhad major damage to their housewith the out by the weather rampage. ine said..