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AP: Storms blamed for two deaths in Kansas
Published 5/25/2011 in Local News
Each of state's 105 counties under watch Tuesday.
GREAT BEND (AP) — Waves of violent storms pounded Kansas on Tuesday with hail, high winds, flooding rain and scattered funnel clouds and brief tornadoes. The storms were blamed for two deaths in the central part of the state.
The Kansas Highway Patrol said two people were killed in a freakish episode around 6 p.m. when a tree was propelled into their van on Highway 281 near the small Stafford County town of St. John, several miles south of great Bend.
It wasn't clear if a tornado warning was in effect at the time, but wind gusts of 60 to 70 mph and higher were being reported throughout the region. Names of the victims were being withheld while their families were notified.
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Associated Press Oklahoma Task Force One search-and-rescue members, from left, Jim Winham, Nick Swainston and Kevin Mann, search through debris for victims Tuesday in Joplin, Mo.
The National Weather Service posted dozens of tornado warnings Tuesday from 2 p.m. on, starting at the western border and spreading into central and then eastern Kansas by evening. Some of the warnings were prompted by sightings of funnel clouds, but many were based on radar readings of clouds or thunderstorms with strong rotation and were quickly allowed to expire.
Near Great Bend, lightning was blamed for a small fire at a four-unit apartment building Tuesday evening. Great Bend Fire Battalion Chief Rick Robison said a witness reported seeing lightning strike the building near an exterior dryer vent.
No injuries were reported. Robison said the smoke and flames were confined to the building's laundry area, but tenants had to find other lodgings for the night.
In Butler County, northeast of Wichita, a semitrailer was blown over on the Kansas Turnpike around 6:30 p.m. And emergency management officials reported a house destroyed in Barton County between Ellinwood and Great Bend.
The threat of severe weather prompted suspension Tuesday afternoon of cleanup and recovery work in the east-central town of Reading, where a tornado Saturday night killed one person and destroyed about 20 homes.
Every one of Kansas' 105 counties was under a tornado watch — meaning conditions were favorable for tornado formation — at some point Tuesday.
Kansas was not the only state with severe weather, as violent storms with winds of more than 150 mph slammed into a chunk of the central U.S. overnight, killing at least 11 people in three states, flattening homes, crushing cars and ripping apart a rural Arkansas fire station.
The high-powered storms arrived Tuesday night and early Wednesday, just days after a massive tornado tore up the southwest Missouri city of Joplin and killed 122 people.
The latest storms killed at least eight people in Oklahoma and two in Kansas before trekking east into Arkansas to claim three more lives.
Just outside the tiny community of Denning in western Arkansas, winery owner Eugene Post listened to from his porch as a tornado barreled toward his home. He saw the lights flicker, as the storms yanked power from the community.
"I didn't see anything," Post, 83, said early Wednesday. "I could hear it real loud though. ... It sounded like a train — or two or three — going by."
Department of Emergency Management spokesman Tommy Jackson said one person died in that tornado early Wednesday, and another was killed in Bethlehem, Johnson County. Franklin County's chief deputy sheriff, Deputy Devin Bramlett, said early Wednesday that a third person died in Etna.
"I don't know, it's just unbelievable," said Rick Covert, Deputy Emergency Management Coordinator for Franklin County, Ark. "It's just total devastation."
A rural fire station in Franklin County was left without a roof as emergency workers rushed to the wounded. Downed trees and power lines tossed across roadways also slowed search-and-rescue crews' efforts.
Emergency officials have accounted for everyone else in Bethlehem, said county emergency management director Josh Johnston. Crews were working through the night in the hopes of saying the same thing for other communities.
Hours earlier, several tornadoes struck Oklahoma City and its suburbs during the Tuesday night rush hour, killing at least eight people and injuring at least 60 others, including three children who were in critical condition, authorities said.
Cherokee Ballard, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Medical Examiner's office, said five people were killed in Canadian County, two in Logan County and one in Grady County. A weather-monitoring site in El Reno recorded 151 mph winds.
Ballard said a child was among those killed, but she had no other details.
The storms destroyed homes in Piedmont, some 20 miles northwest of Oklahoma City and threw vehicles about like toys tossed from a stroller.
"My husband and I were driving around yesterday and went past a house and there was a vehicle in the pond in the front yard. The only way I could tell it was a vehicle was I could see four wheels above the water. It was a crushed ball," Piedmont Mayor Valerie Thomerson said Wednesday.
"We have anything from houses that have shingles blown off, to half the house missing, to the house being completely wiped out, gone," Thomerson said.
Some residents said they had been warned about the impending weather for days and were watching television or listening to the radio so they would know when to take cover.
"We live in Oklahoma and we don't mess around," Lori Jenkins said. "We kept an eye on the weather and knew it was getting close."
She took refuge with her husband and two children in a neighbor's storm shelter in the Oklahoma City suburb of Guthrie. When they emerged, they discovered their carport had been destroyed and the back of their home was damaged.
Chris Pyle was stunned as he pulled into the suburban neighborhood near Piedmont where he lived as a teenager. His parents' home was destroyed, but the house next door had only a few damaged shingles.
"That's when it started sinking in," he said. "You don't know what to think. There are lots of memories, going through the trash tonight, finding old trophies and pictures."
His parents, Fred and Snow Pyle, rode out the storm in a shelter at a nearby school.
At Chickasha, 25 miles southwest of Oklahoma City, a 26-year-old woman died when a tornado hit a mobile home park where residents had been asked to evacuate their trailers, Assistant Police Chief Elip Moore said. He said a dozen people were injured and that hundreds were displaced when the storm splintered their homes.
The path of the storms included Joplin, which is cleaning up from a Sunday storm that was the nation's eighth-deadliest twister among records dating to 1840. Late-night tornado sirens had Joplin's residents ducking for cover again before the storm brushed past without serious problems.
The storms also blew through North Texas, but the damage seemed to be confined to roofs and trees and lawn furniture and play equipment.
"The hail was probably more destructive," said Steve Fano, National Weather Service meteorologist in Fort Worth.
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