Twister Terror: Nature Runs Wild

It is one of nature's bitter ironies that spring--the season of rebirth--also brings an irresistible, destructive force that strikes terror into the hearts of all who have experienced it. That deadly force is the tornado. Last week, as na ture ran amuck, tornadoes struck with their full fury.

The storm built slowly, ominously. From the Gulf of Mexico, huge masses of warm, moist air moved northward to ward the center of the continent. From the West, a threatening layer of cooler, drier air seeped eastward toward the Appalachians, sliding under the moist air. As the two layers converged in an uneasy mixture, tremendous turbulence developed. In the roiling atmosphere, embryo funnels of spinning air formed, dissolved and reformed--a telltale sign that the tornado season had arrived.

Weathermen issued increasingly urgent warnings to residents in "Tornado Alley," that vast stretch of plains lying be tween the Appalachians and the Rockies and sweeping from Georgia and Alabama up to Canada. When the storms hit in midweek, the tornado fun nels were twirling at 200 m.p.h.

From Decatur, Ala., to Windsor, Ont., tornado winds chewed up homes and businesses, sent cars, buses and even freight trains spinning aloft, toppled massive power line towers and wiped out whole families. More than 60 twisters flickered out of the sky over an eleven-state area, claiming more than 300 lives and destroying property worth nearly $400 million. It was the most devastating salvo of tornadoes to hit the U.S. since 1925, when 689 were killed. President Nixon declared Alabama, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Georgia and Tennessee disaster areas. Vice President Ford, after viewing devastated portions of Ohio from the air, called the wasting of the landscape "unbelievable. Houses have been reduced to matchsticks."

Blew Away. The roll call of death and destruction was staggering. Alabama: 72 dead, more than $40 million in damages. Georgia: 16 dead, nearly $15 million. Illinois: two dead, $3 million. Indiana: 40 dead, $100 million. Kentucky: 71 dead, $100 million. Michigan: three dead, $3.5 million. North Carolina: five dead, more than $4 million. Ohio: 37 dead, $100 million. Tennessee: 46 dead, $25 million. Virginia: one dead, $1 million. West Virginia: one dead, $1 million. Additional thousands of people were left homeless, hundreds of others injured; estimates of property damage were certain to increase.

Among the hardest-hit regions was northwestern Alabama. The main street of Jasper (pop. 11,300) sustained $14 million worth of damage and was practically wiped out. The city hall was demolished and the stone courthouse left close to toppling. Radio Announcer Joel Cook of station WARF gasped to listeners, "We can't talk to the police department--it just blew away." In the same region, 19 persons were killed, most of them from the small town of Guin, Ala. (pop. 2,200). Reported a state trooper after the storm: "Guin just isn't there."

In Georgia's rural Dawson County, Henry Bearden, 63, herded his wife and sons into the kitchen at the first sign of the storm. A tornado passed right over the area, leaving Bearden and his family unscathed. But when he looked toward his daughter Delores' house next door, "there wasn't nothin' there." He found his daughter and her family in a pile of lumber that had been blown across the road: she and her son were dead, one of her daughters lay dying, and her husband Jimmy and another daughter were seriously injured. The center of the tornado must have passed directly over the house of Bearden's daughter. Because pressure inside the eye of a tornado is so low, a partial vacuum developed around the house and the greater pressure inside literally blew the structure apart. The raging winds then scattered the debris.

In Brandenburg, Ky., 29 were killed, most of them children caught playing outside after school. Relatives and friends at week's end were still having difficulty identifying some of the disfigured remains. One woman spent more than 24 hours searching for her 1 1/2-year-old boy; she finally found him in one of the plastic bags that Army volunteers had been using to store the remains of dead victims. Most of the town's business section was wiped out. Said Kentucky Governor Wendell Ford after surveying the damage: "I looked at it and wanted to cry."

In Xenia, Ohio (pop. 27,000), half the town was demolished, 28 persons killed and more than 585 people injured. The storm cut a swatch a half-mile wide and three miles long through Xenia--all in five minutes. One terrified elderly victim, the roof of her small frame house completely blown off, sat wrapped in a blanket in a rocking chair hours after the holocaust. When firemen tried to persuade her to leave, she simply shook her head, refusing to say a word.

Curling Deaths. Karen Scott, 17, of Fort Wayne, Ind., was returning from Iowa with five companions in a Volkswagen bus. As the vehicle crossed a bridge over a narrow finger of Indiana's Lake Freeman, a tornado funnel lifted the bus and flung it 50 ft. into the water. Karen managed to escape the sinking vehicle and swim to safety. The body of one of her companions was found when the van was finally hoisted from the lake. The other four are still missing. When the tornadoes approached Madison, Ind., Larry O'Connell and his wife Beverly huddled with their four children in a closet of their bedroom. The only part of their shattered home left standing after the storm had passed was the closet. They were uninjured.

In Decatur, Ill., a 20-minute storm siege plowed a path 80 yards wide through three residential sections of the city, killing two people and damaging or demolishing 150 homes. Farther north, in Windsor, Ont., contestants at a local curling rink heard a loud bang, then saw one wall begin to buckle. Before the storm ended, two-thirds of the roof had been lifted off, eight people were dead, and 20 more were injured.

In Sugar Valley, Ga., neighbors found the home of the Goble family demolished and nine-year-old Randall Goble running in circles in the backyard, screaming hysterically. He was alive only because the tornado's winds had picked him up and carried him 200 yds. before flinging him to the ground. Young Randall was taken to a hospital where he cried to a nurse, "Tell me it was a bad dream. Where's my mommy and daddy?"

As with hundreds of other families, it was more than a bad dream. Randall's parents and two sisters were found dead in the den of their battered home.

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