Tornadoes/Spring Storms
The Night the Devil Danced Through our Town
My personal account of April 26, 1991’ when an F5 tornado hit Andover, KS
We heard a tornado warning on tv so my husband went outside and started scanning the skies. No one immediately runs for shelter when these warnings are first issued. Nine times out of ten they don’t head in any real direction and/or they never amount to much. So when a warning is issued everyone has to go outside to see for themselves, something weathermen always warn people NOT to do.
I followed him, but I was groggy because he’d awakened me from a nap with the news. So there we were out on our patio scanning the sky in all directions as we waved and shouted over at neighbors who were in their backyards doing the same thing.
But, it was a Saturday evening and the sky did actually look very ominous and much worse than we could recall from any time before. It was inky black, gray, and purple like the above photo and it was eerily calm without even a breeze; very unusual here in KS. I had turned the volume on the tv turned up so we could hear it outside and soon we heard they had actually spotted a tornado that they warned was a mile wide and about 6 miles SW of us headed for McConnell Airforce Base.
“Get Sammy and Bear (our 11 yr old daughter) and go to the basement. Get under the stairs. I’ll join you in a minute.” My husband said. “You better hurry,” I said.
It was maybe 5 minutes later when he joined us and he was showing fear as he grabbed all of us into his arms like a protective Eagle and he began to pray out loud. Our daughter held Sammy our Boston Terrier and she started crying. “What’s going to happen to us?” She asked, pleading for reassurance, but we had none to give. “Just pray, Bear.” Her dad whispered and so we all began…
“Please Father, protect us, our home, and our neighbors and if it can be your will, please don’t let the tornado hit our town. Keep us safe, Lord, and forgive us our sins as we forgive others.” And then we heard it…
Tornadoes DO sound like a train… A screeching, whining huge roaring train 10 times bigger than they really are barreling down on top of you. We covered our ears and Bear told us afterward that Sammy had shook so badly she was barely able to hold onto him.
And then a few minutes later it abruptly stopped and we heard nothing but dead quiet. “Stay here. I’m going up to check things out.” I didn’t argue because I wasn’t ready to go and see whatever might be outside. I just knew our house was still standing and we were fine and so I was thanking God and cradling our daughter until I heard him yell…
“It’s okay now you can come up. Our block is okay…”
When we reached the top of the stairs and looked out the bay window in front of us I saw he was right, miraculously our neighborhood had been spared, but behind the house at the end of our court — there was nothing — All the homes that had been there were gone…’ oh God!’
One of my best friends lived there and I knew lots of other people there too so we headed out on foot as we began to walk to that area, we saw lots of debris everywhere; shingles, tar paper, branches and sticks off trees plus tons of green leaves as this was the height of Spring.’
The closer we got the more debris we saw; phones, keyboards, broken glass, boards until we were a block away and the debris became so thick with boards and large chunks of roofs we had to walk over it and it was as deep as our knees. Then we suddenly heard a man yell, “be careful where you step, there may be bodies under here .”
That was it for me… I took Bear’s hand and we turned around and headed home where we found our electricity and our phones were knocked out, so I didn’t know what to do. I thought of the dinner we’d missed and I made some sandwiches and we waited for my husband, who soon returned and told us that everyone we knew was okay — thank God, although their homes were totally gone. Rain and hail began an hour after the tornado and we ended up sheltering several kids for the night who belonged to our friends. In the meantime, EMTs using loudspeakers as they drove around the area were asking for all the men to return and help search for people/bodies. My husband joined them
The next two days passed in a blur…the Natl Guard was stationed all around to keep looters out and we learned we had to show our driver’s licenses every time we left and returned to town. A trailer park had been flattened and several people who had lived there were killed. A makeshift morgue was set up in a large restaurant on the main street and ambulances and EMTs were everywhere searching through the debris for more bodies and assisting however they could. All the hospitals were on stand-by emergency status so doctors and nurses were on duty for days afterward to treat the wounded.
The Red Cross and other relief agencies showed up and took displaced residents to motels where many of them would stay for months while their homes were cleared away until they could be rebuilt.
Our electricity and phones were back on by mid-day, but helicopters were constantly flying overhead like our little suburban town was a war zone. The whirling sound of them caused everyone to experience trauma that lasted for many years. A lot of residents left and said they’d never live here again.
The trailer park was rebuilt and it grew to several acres this time with large underground shelters included in the new layout. It’s much nicer now too. It’s said mobile home parks actually attract tornadoes, but who really knows?
I looked at some YouTubes you can find that show the destruction but none of them are really very good, but the whole thing is permanently burned into our memories. We kept newspaper articles about it that we stored away in case our daughter wants them someday.
Yes, the Devil danced on our town as that’s how the local news put it, but we stayed and moved into our current home 5 years later which is a mere mile away from our last one. We love our little city as it holds 43 years of memories for us. Although we’ve been tempted to move away, I doubt we ever will. With Spring storms upon us, including tornado warnings, please pay attention to them and heed the warnings! As we learned, they can be killers.
Thank you for reading and thoughtful writing everyone. 💖