Twenty years ago today, an F5 tornado left two people dead and 367 homes and businesses damaged or destroyed in and near the town of Hesston.
And although the physical damage long has been mended, for those who lived through the twister, the memories are as clear today as they were then.
Hesston residents were returning home from work around the time the tornado touched down in Reno County. It moved northeast to Burrton, where a 6-year- old boy became the first of the storm’s two casualties. According to the National Weather Service’s Wichita forecast office Web site, the boy took cover with his family in their basement but was killed when the house’s chimney collapsed.
The tornado grew even stronger as it headed for Hesston.
“No sooner had I gotten home that I heard sirens go off,” said Duane Graham, a Hesston resident since 1966. He immediately readied his camera to photograph the storm. He said he and his daughter took several photos from his yard as they watched the storm approach.
“Then we went to the basement at the insistence of my wife,” he said.
Unlike Graham, Mildred Martens-Unruh of Hesston did not see the tornado approaching.
“I noticed on the way home, the sky looked very eerie,” she said, continuing that her first notice of the tornado was a call from her husband. Then the sirens sounded.
Martens-Unruh, her daughter-in-law and infant grandson took cover in a basement bedroom.
“It sounded like a hundred-car freight train on top of my head,” she said, adding her daughter-in-law heard nothing. They stayed put until they heard others moving around outside after the storm had passed.
The storm then joined with another and moved in the direction of Goessel, where it claimed the life of an elderly woman, according to the National Weather Service.
Graham said he and his family were only in their basement for five or 10 minutes. When they came outside, the impact of the storm was immediately obvious. A neighbor’s home down the street was missing its roof. Houses on Main Street were barely standing; some were demolished.
Graham’s house sustained only minor cosmetic damage. He and his wife still live in the same house.
Martens-Unruh was not as lucky. When she and her daughter-in-law emerged from the basement, she heard a hissing noise. She said she knew immediately it was gas. They got out of the house as quickly as they could; it took only a few minutes for them to see smoke.
Even though the fire station was only blocks away, Martens-Unruh said it took 25 minutes for fire crews to get there because of all the debris in the road. She remembers seeing debris everywhere.
“It looked like the west part of Hesston had just ... landed in our yard,” she said.
The house had suffered such severe damage from the storm and fire, it had to be demolished. Her family had lived in the home since 1961. She and her husband had raised their three sons there.
“We didn’t know how to say good-bye to our house,” she said.
When the tornado passed, it left $25 million worth of damage in Harvey County. The tornado was rated an F5 on the Fujita scale, with winds reaching 261 to 318 mph.
Despite the severe devastation, the town was quick to recover, according to then-mayor John Waltner.
“The tornado in Hesston had an economic development impact — if one can term it that way,” he said.
Though he concedes it was “not the most desirable route to follow to economic development,” he notes a lot of rebuilding took place immediately following the tornado. Because there were only two deaths, and relatively few injuries given the magnitude of the tornado, he said the community was more immediately able to return to normal and begin rebuilding.
He also said he believes the destruction could have been exponentially worse. Though to residents, the loss of homes was devastating, he said the damage was easier for the community to recover from than if the tornado had struck a school, senior center or public facility with high concentrations of people.
“At least, in my mind, it makes a difference” that more vulnerable areas were not hit, Waltner said.
In addition to obvious physical changes, Waltner said he thinks the residents who remember the tornado are more prepared in case the next “big one” hits.
“People in Hesston are aware of what can happen,” he said.
He also said local government is better prepared to respond to such a devastating storm. Though local police were dispatched to issue warnings and help locals after the tornado passed, he cites the lack of an emergency power plan 20 years ago. In that respect, he said the town would be more prepared for such an event now.
As for alerting the community, Waltner said he thinks they were successful in issuing multiple warnings on radio and television, as well as sounding the sirens. The National Weather Service credits the successful use of alert systems with relatively low death and injury rates.
Now the Harvey County administrator, Waltner maintains preparedness is important, as are adequate alerts, but “there’s also just an element of luck,” he said, “and we were very fortunate.”
