Wednesday, May 18, 2005
MONSTERS in the WEATHER
 
Note: (June, 2005) The following editorial piece was featured in the Grand Island Daily Independent, my hometown paper, in commemoration of the disaster that struck the city on June 3, 1980. The following is dedicated to the memory of those who lost their lives, and to those who survived and helped rebuild.

The flapping of a single butterfly's wing today produces a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the atmosphere actually does diverges from what it would have done.

So, in a month's time, a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn't happen. Or maybe one that wasn't going to happen, does.

Ian Stewart, Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos
My hometown was destroyed by the eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980, twenty-five years ago today. I didn’t know it at the time, but this would prove to be my first lesson in Chaos Theory. Mount St. Helens is in Washington State. My hometown is Grand Island, Nebraska, more than a thousand miles away.

It would be two weeks before the butterfly effect of one natural disaster, the largest volcanic eruption ever experienced in the United States, would culminate into another, the freak storm that swept seven tornadoes through my hometown in a single evening (three of them anti-cyclonic, and one speculated to be "one of the strongest tornadoes ever" by the meteorologist team Wakimoto and Fujita, who developed the Fujita scale of tornadic intensity), leveling more than one-fifth of the city of 35,000 people. In the interim, we watched the sun burn through an atmosphere laden with volcanic ash each night, igniting the sky with molten-red sunsets. Red is a warning color, but it sure was pretty.

A DOOMED PLACE

On June 3rd, we didn't get to see the sun set in Grand Island. The memories start getting vivid right around suppertime. I can’t say for sure that they are accurate – I was eleven-and-a-half years old – but they are vivid.

I remember it was a Tuesday. I remember my dad was working the 4-Midnight shift at the Ordinance Plant that evening and the rest of my family ate at Valentino’s with my mom’s sister and her two kids. I remember sitting in the car while mom paid the bill and noticing the tallest, thinnest thunderhead towering so high in the north that it looked almost like it was tipping over. I wondered if it might rain.

After supper, we took a drive through Riverside to look at the houses. We each pointed out our favorite house. Each of us had a different favorite. In just a few hours, many of them would be gone. And I remember in those final moments how everything seemed draped in a grayish haze, like a fog of dead calm had settled in over us – over the entire city. I now know that this is what a doomed place looks like. But as breathless as I remember those final moments of calm being, we were oblivious. I remember thinking, in the days that followed, how we didn’t know. None of us knew that an ending was coming.

Then, by the slightest whisper of a breeze, that breathless calm dissolved away and the ending commenced. By the time we got back to our house, the breeze had become a stiff wind – not blowing from the south, but sucking from the north. We watched the clouds speeding by over our heads. I remember thinking that I had never seen clouds move so fast. My aunt wisely loaded my cousins into her car and scurried them back to Hastings.

By now, it was darker in the north, and we turned on the television to check the weather report. Cable TV hadn’t reached our neighborhood yet and there was no such thing as The Weather Channel. With only an antenna, we received three broadcast stations. They were broadcasting a tornado warning: Howard County, to our north, heading northeast, away from us. Satisfied, Mom busied herself with other things. I watched the sky darken, and said, “It’s coming this way.”

In the SHADOW of a MONSTER

Mom looked out the window, unconvinced. “No it’s not,” she said. But moments later, the tornado warning was revised to include Hall County and the city of Grand Island. I remember saying, “See?” And it got darker and darker. Still, we had no clue a monster was hovering over us, even though we were sitting right in its shadow.

I remember it being black as midnight long before sunset. I remember the tornado warning being revised and extended for Grand Island, over and over. Each time the warning was due to expire, it was extended for another half hour or forty-five minutes. And the storm wouldn’t pass.

We lived on the southwest side of town, just outside the city limits. When the entire city blacked out, we still had electricity. So we sat in the basement that night, watching TV, watching the reporters repeat the warnings, then extend them. I ran upstairs at one point to look. Through the lightning flashes and torrents of rain, I saw the wind blowing straight down from above, pressing the tree branches into the grass of our lawn. There was a steady roar. Heart racing, I ran back to the basement and stayed there.

We listened as the radio stations went dead. The meteorologists on TV persisted, but when they lost contact with the National Weather Service office in Grand Island, words began to fail even them. With all communications down, and roads impassable, I remember one reporter finally admitting candidly something like, “We’ve lost Grand Island. We don’t know what’s happened.” We had been under constant tornado warnings for over three hours.

As midnight approached, the storm finally drifted off to the southeast. But the night was blacker than ever. I remember my mom on the phone with tears in her eyes, trying to get through to my grandparents. They lived on Pleasant View Drive, seven blocks east of South Locust Street, and four blocks south of Bismark Road. Their phones were out. Mom sent me to bed. My dad would be home soon.

DAWNING

Sometime during the night, I got up. I found my grammy lying on the couch in our living room. She lifted her head and said, “Hi.” I can still hear that simple syllable, as if she’s saying it right this moment. It was such a good thing to hear.

“What are you doing here?” I asked her. She told me the tornado went right through their back yard and knocked down their fence and some trees. After my dad had come home from work, he’d driven in to check on them. There were rumors of damage in the business district on South Locust Street, the normal route to my grandparents’ house, so he chose an alternate route and was able to reach their house despite the power outage and downed power lines. A strong smell of gas made them decide to ride back to our house with him for the remainder of the night.

And we still had no idea.

I remember when it finally dawned on us, suddenly like an unexpected dip in a country road. It was just after sunrise, while watching footage from a helicopter on the morning news. Just as I wondered, “What war-torn city is that?” it was revealed. We were seeing a ruined Grand Island. It was my hometown – my war-torn city. I was so instantly thrust into an entirely new reality, I might as well have traveled light years through a worm hole. Things I had never questioned were shaken at their very foundation. Things I had thought to be permanent had been effortlessly snuffed out. Whoosh. Just like that. Overnight. A snap of the fingers, a crackle of thunder, and my entire world had changed. From that day on, I knew there were monsters in the weather.

Moments later we were in the car, on our way to Grammy and Grandpa’s house on Pleasant View Drive. We had to pass through military checkpoints and show ID that proved where we lived.

When we reached South Locust Street, we encountered our first hint of what had happened the night before. A tornado had leveled the entire two-mile stretch of the business district and its surrounding neighborhoods, including Riverside, where just yesterday we’d picked out our favorite houses. As we drove through the intersection, I looked up the street and saw it strewn with debris, pieces of buildings, and battered cars.

We drove on, retracing the path my dad had taken in the dark. We passed lakes where my grandpa and I fished, now flanked with the skeletons of cottonwood trees and full of black, angry water, shingles, broken lumber, and trash. When we reached my grandparents house, we saw their uprooted tree and the destroyed fence in their back yard. We also realized they would likely need a new roof. To their west and southwest, towards South Locust Street and the path of the tornado that destroyed it, the houses had suffered much greater damage.

Across the street to their east, their neighbor was rummaging through a demolished garage. And beyond that, to the north and for roughly three miles east, not a single house was standing. All the way to the horizon, nothing remained. A tornado had followed a four-mile stretch of Bismark Road, obliterating everything for several blocks on either side. Just one house stood between my grandparents and miles of total destruction.

After following Bismark Road for three miles, the tornado had veered south for another three miles, demolishing South Locust Street. All the destruction we had seen thus far had been caused by just one of the seven tornadoes that hit Grand Island that night.

SHOCK and AWE

I wandered up Pleasant View Drive in a daze. The rubble of former homes was still being searched. There could have been people trapped beneath the debris I was looking at. And there were other people wandering like I was, with blank faces and wide eyes. Some had matted hair. Others were covered in scratches. I saw a woman walking barefoot, wearing turquoise shorts and a white pajama top, with dried blood on her cheek. I worried she would step on a nail, but her look scared me. They all appeared to be looking for something far away.

I passed a Red Cross truck, and a volunteer offered me a sandwich. I shook my head no. I was hungry, but felt guilty. I didn’t think I was a victim, though I’m sure I looked like one. I looked shocked. The volunteer encouraged me to take it, so I did and continued to walk towards Bismark Road.

At the center of the tornado's path, Bismark appeared to have been a clean sweep. I remember seeing a lawn, perfectly green and freshly cut, with cement steps and a cinderblock foundation in the center, and nothing else. Not a splinter of wood, not a scrap of paper or even a torn photograph had been left behind by the winds.

And here, standing at Bismark Road, I began to cry. I cried for these families who didn’t even have any rubble to sift through or pieces to pick up. And then I cried for the people who had dug themselves out of their broken homes, and for the people who’d been pulled out of the wreckage. I cried for the rescuers who were searching for survivors and for the dogs who were sniffing for bodies. I cried for the volunteer who gave me the sandwich, and the lady in her turquoise shorts. I cried for my grammy and grandpa, who had been so lucky. I cried for what I could have lost, but didn’t. And I cried for what I would never have again – for what all of us who lived in Grand Island had lost. Finally, I cried for us not knowing yesterday what was about to end.

A PEOPLE TRANSFORMED

A transformative experience is an event that affects us so deeply, we are changed at the core. We come through such an experience transformed, a different person than we were before. A transformative experience expands our world-view, broadens our universe, and gives us wholly new perspectives. They are our gateways to wisdom. They may increase our potential, help us recognize it, and even push us to reach it. They can be pleasant and enlightening. But because they often involve change, they can be painful as well. A great tragedy is such an experience.

In times of tragedy, we must find within ourselves the wisdom to recognize it for what it is, and the strength of character to bear the pain. The support of friends, family, and a strong community make it possible to carry on. And those who persevere come through the experience transformed: stronger, wiser, and perhaps with new understanding of the world. A community can be transformed too, becoming more closely knit, more neighborly, and more compassionate. There’s no such thing as a stranger in a time of tragedy.

The people of Grand Island were transformed, as individuals and as a community, when their world was changed on the Night of the Twisters. I lost some innocence that night. My illusions of stability and permanence were exposed. My size was put into new perspective. As was the power of those who took care of me. Our fragility was revealed, our hearts were torn open, and our strength was tested.

The people of Grand Island are a haunted people, who will forever be tormented by the monsters in the weather. We were transformed by that night, each in our own way. And though we are haunted, we are wiser and stronger for it.

 
So far, this post has made 5 people think of something to say. COMMENT.

Comments:
I don't have as vivid of memories of that night. I was only 6 at the time, but I do vividly remember mom hurrying us into the car and rushing us back home to Hastings. I remember the look of the sky as we headed back home and I remember the enormity of the tree that was ripped from Grammy and Grandpa's yard. The fact that a 6 year old would remember as much as I do is proof of the storms power!

Wonderful writing Matt!

Marci
 
I was in Grand Island that night!?! It's all a little foggy for this two year old. Of course I don't have any memories this vivid from my 11th year either.

PBS here we come. Good work Matteo.
 
Wow thanks for posting that on our forums at gitwisters.com. I oversee that site and I'm making sure our editor handling the Independent's special coverage of the 25th anniversary of the tornadoes reads it as well. Wonderfully vivid stuff!
 
Here, here.

What a great story.

I didn't live in G.I. in 1980. I have lived here since I was 13 (w/a 5-year break for college) and I am nearly 28. But you plopped me right down in the middle of it all.

Beautiful composition!
 
Matt, This story helped your old aunt fill in a couple of gaps in her memory of that night. It also brought tears to my eyes as I remembered the horror. The neat thing about it is that twenty-five years later, the city has mostly recovered and looks better than ever. Ironically, just two weeks ago, Hastings was hit with a monster storm of another kind, hail, which didn't do quite as much damage, but which was as scary and just as damaging psychologically to many of my friends who lived it. Thanks for sharing your memories! Love, Jerri
 
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