The Cincinnati Enquirer from Cincinnati, Ohio • Page 3

Tan Cincinnati Enquirer WMOE Saturday, April 10, 1999 A3 Path of Destructio 'That's the worst job. When you have to tell someone that both parents are dead. Or. Edward Otten, search and rescue member Visit enquirer.com for contin uing cov- VTS erage of the Tornado of '99 A survivor Bengals coach: 'God's hand on me' Robertses OK; home is gone BY GEOFF HOBSON The Cincinnati Enquirer First there was the wind. Then there was light.

And then a strange, hurricane-like warmth. Then there was God. Al Roberts figures it took three, maybe four seconds. "God's hand was on me. I'll tell you that a thousand times," said Mr.

Roberts, the Bengals special-teams coach who survived the flying wedge of Friday's tornado. Mr. Roberts showed up at Spinney Field on Friday to shower and change. The only thing saved from his leveled Montgomery home at 7591 Lakewater Dr. was a clump of his wife's clothes.

"Understand, there's nothing left," he said. "The living room. Dining room. Kitchen. Gone.

Upstairs there's three bedrooms, a hallway, a bathroom. Nothing If you saw the house, you wouldn't know how we got out of there." Lee and Jacqueline Cook, who lived directly behind Al and Arvella Roberts less than a block away at 7575 Cornell Road, didn't make it out. They died. Mr. Roberts figured they were thrown 25 to 30 yards from their home.

Lifted five feet KRISTA RAMSEY Community safe, serene and vulnerable The telephone begins ringing after dawn. Local friends calling first, then family and friends from across the country. They know Montgomery as my hometown, and Pfeiffer Road as my exit. They see pictures of the destruction on television in Minnesota and Colorado and Cleveland. They wonder if my family is alive.

We are fine, the house is fine, the cat is fine, everything is fine, I assure them at first. But by afternoon, I realize that is not true. A few streets over, friends have lost homes. Favorite trees. The trampoline in the backyard.

This morning the winds blew, buildings fell, people huddled in basements and came up to destruction. This lovely place that we worked so hard to make safe and impenetrable wasn't those things after all. That was the first lesson of this difficult day. That we are fine. But that all sorts of things have changed.

A previous encounter Hast -'yMmt wF VHKHHKB'JQtfS- ImBB' The Cincinnati Enquirer Glenn Hartong of there." Al Roberts, the Bengals' special teams coach, steps through the scattered "If you saw the house, you wouldn't know how we got out remains of his home on Lakewater Drive in Montgomery. "I'm not a tornado guy. It felt Mr. Roberts was stunned to see The Robertses were thrown, too, when the winds sliced through Interstate 275 about 5 a.m. The rush of air woke Mr.

Roberts, then he and Mrs. Roberts were lifted in the air about five feet across their bedroom. Mrs. Roberts landed first, Mr. Roberts followed as he began to pray.

He uttered, "Father," before the mattress landed on them. warm, like a hurricane," Mr. Roberts said. "I'm looking up at black sky. The whole roof is gone.

Rain is coming down. I have to put my clothes on. I put my shirt on after there was some lightning and I saw it on the floor." Bengals' jackets and each a shoe. Something had smashed his company car and nearly totalled it. The truck in the garage had a chimney on the roof.

Insurance battle looms By dinner time, Mr. Roberts was still trying to come down from the experience. His insur movie) Twister. I didn't think it was me in there," Mr. Roberts said.

"That's the problem today. We get so desensitized." Mr. Roberts, who plans to wear his Bengals garb until he gets a new wardrobe, was asked if he needed anything. "A returner," he said. ance company was trying to tell him he had no coverage, but Mr.

Roberts was gearing up to fight because that was news to him. Like a movie The news showed the devastation on TV and Mr. Roberts felt odd. "I thought I was watching (the his wife struggling to open the front door. "I said, 'Sweetheart, you don't have to worry about it.

We can walk out the living room because there's no When they got outside, they saw a mother and son in their night clothes and gave them two The Robertses slid through the debris on the shaky stairs and The shelters Evacuees find plenty of help What I know of tornadoes I have learned the hard way. Fourteen springs ago, my sister-in-law's home was turned to a pile of shattered glass and splintered wood by a twister that tore apart Newark, Ohio. Up close, the most striking thing about a tornado is the utter care it takes in destruction. Things are not merely broken. They are twisted, shredded, smashed, pulverized.

Then, just down the road, a house sits perfectly intact. This is why we fear and hate twisters so, for their perverse and arbitrary nature. We can understand them no more than life itself. Why is one house destroyed and the next one left? Why does cne person grow old and another die young? Seat belts, sun block, Vitamin and oat bran are supposed to protect us. But when the forces of life blow against us, we are frail as a flower.

That is the second lesson of this uncomfortable day. The final lesson My mother's voice trembles over the phone. "I'm just so Survivors eager to swap stories 4 Hvffi1 ''VHIBnnlHHHHHBBSS 'iiillimrall BY DANA DiFILIPPO and LEW MOORES The Cincinnati Enquirer Marjorie and James Glenn were in the minority Friday. They were one of only a handful of storm victims at a makeshift shelter at the Sycamore Junior High School, where 350 volunteers and rescue workers gathered. Rescue organizers speculated that the shelter didn't fill up because storm victims headed for relatives' and friends' homes or hotels paid for by their homeowners' insurance.

Time to get up' The Glenns, who live in Leesburg, were in Montgomery visiting their daughter, Julie Stiffler, 53, and grandchildren Kenny and Lindsey. The family's condominium suffered little damage besides broken windows, but emergency crews evacuated the neighborhood to check for potential structural problems. "We woke up to rain and fog and glass blowing in our faces," said Mr. Glenn, 77. "We decided then that it was time to get up." "There was no teeth- The Cincinnati EnquirerSaed Hindash The Cincinnati Enquirer'Saed Hindash glad you're safe," she says.

"I love you all so much." I am silent for a moment, looking around my kitchen. No shattered glass spewed across the floor. No walls caved in. Nothing looks different from yesterday. But had it come a quarter-mile southeast, the storm would have hit here.

"I love you, too, Mom," I say. "We're OK." I hang up the phone and call a friend. "How are things there?" I ask. "We're glad you're safe. We love you guys." No shattered glass.

No walls caved in. Nothing looks different, but everything is. Foundations have been laid bare, and so have emotions. There is no way to protect ourselves from the storms of life. Still, we know how to pick up the pieces.

That is the final lesson I have learned: Life shakes us and shudders hard, but the best things remain. Elisabeth Bardes, of Anderson Township worries about her two cats, while waiting at the shelter set up at Sycamore Junior High School. The pets were staying with her mother, who lived on Cornell Road in Sycamore Township and lost everything to the storm. Restaurants and supermar- from the chaotic cafeteria that kets donated food for storm served as shelter headquar- Sheri Stearn of Blue Ash, right, offers clothes and help at the shelter at Sycamore Junior High School. On the phone is Carol Theler, the shelter manager.

There were 350 volunteers and rescue workers ready to pitch in. brushing, no hair-combing and came to the temporary shel ter at the junior high on loo hit that I wanted to come here and help out," said Ivory Laibson, a Sycamore High School student. "It's kind of scary, this being so close to home." 'A helping hand' Sycamore High junior Scott Miller added: "I drove by the devastation and I knew people needed a helping hand." no face-washing this morning," added his 76-year-old wife. The storm created such a vacuum that she was sucked out the bedroom door and then stumbled down the stairs when she tried to flee to the condo's basement, Mrs. Glenn added.

Like the Glenns, the other evacuated residents who ters. "This is my school, and this is my community," said Mr. Mirus, who lives a mile away from the school. By Friday evening, 72 people were at the shelter at Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy. The shelters will remain open through the weekend.

victims. Nurses worked with Red Cross volunteers to get medication from pharmacies for evacuees who forgot needed prescriptions at home. Classroom a refuge Dan Mirus, a seventh-grade math teacher at Sycamore Junior High, offered his classroom as a peaceful refuge per Koaa ana anotner at Christian Hills Academy in Sycamore Township seemed eager to share their stories of survival. Equally talkative were the volunteers, many of whom said they felt driven to help because of their fortune in escaping injury and damage. "I was so glad I didn't get Coping with the MQRM By noon Friday, Barry Begley had sold all of the weather radios from the RadioShack in Symmes Township, off Fields Ertel Road.

By 4:30 p.m., the electronics chain's district sales manager was driving back from a distribution center outside Columbus witii 800 of the radios two cases on the luggage rack, the rest filling his Ford Explorer to the roof. "I can't get another in the car," he said via cellular phone. Mr. Begley. who is responsible tor 29 RadioShack locations in Cincinnati, was restocking the radios after storms Friday morning created a run on them He said store managers were calling by midday, saying their supply was out or dwindling fast.

And the demand wasn't just in northern Hamilton County, where the most damage was sustained. Mr. Begley said RadioShacks from Florence to Middletown were telling him they needed more. The weather radios are designed to tune into a National Weather Service broadcast on a frequency that regular radios can't pick up. Many of the buyers Friday morning said they wanted one because they hadn't heard emergency warning sirens Other shoppers said they had been meaning to buy a weather radio, and the storm was a reminder.

Mr. Begley said that by Friday evening, he hoped to get 80 radios in each of at least 10 stores, including those on Fields Ertel and in Noriqate Mall. The tree in Vera Bauer's front yard was little more than a sapling when she and her husband moved to their Kenwood Road home in Blue Ash 49 years ago. Friday, it snapped in half, bending over her yard like a performer bowing to his audience. The fierce winds, strangely and luckily, did not damage her home.

"My husband's in the hospital from a stroke he had last week, and I don't want to bring him home, because this could give him a heart attack," Mrs. Bauer said. When neighbors Jim and Kathy Meis-berger stopped by to check on their elderly neighbor, the trio marveled at the storm's capriciousness. "My plastic lawn furniture never moved, but the tree next to it, which is about 40 feet tall, uprooted," said Mr. Meis-berger.

37. "It's weird." Nearby, landscapers using chainsaws made slow but steady progress at cleaning up the debris on lawns they just days ago to Marth? Stewart perfection. Friday's storms through Greater Cincinnati were strong enough to shake the ground and showed up on the University of Cincinnati's new computerized seismograph. Between 4:54 and 5:15 a.m., the seismograph detected an odd pattern of ground shaking. When Attila Kilinc.

head of UC's geology department, showed up for work later Friday, he found strong readings and called to see if there had been an earthquake anywhere in the world. There had not. The readings showed up only on the station on the UC campus. The next closest seismograph at Wright State University near Dayton, Ohio, did not pick up readings, Mr. Kilinc said.

While the height of the waves on his reading resemble the strength of a small earthquake, the pattern is much different and measurements such as the Richter scale don't apply, he said. Wind shears from the tornado system that moved through the region were so powerful that they likely caused the ground to shake. Mr. Kilinc said. The monitoring system has been up and running since Feb.

5 at UCjc geology lab. The Cincinnati Enquirer'Saed Hindash.