A 14-State Barrage of Twisters

By Ed Magnuson

Once a month this fall, natural disasters have devastated widely scattered parts of the U.S. In September Hurricane Hugo slammed into the Carolina coast; October brought the San Francisco Bay earthquake. Last week the furies returned in a burst of tornadoes. Frigid air howled out of the Arctic to collide with record balmy weather pushing northward from the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. The unseasonable clash generated a hopscotching barrage of twisters through 14 states from Arkansas to New York that killed at least 30 people. Though the storms were briefer than Hugo, the whirling winds were stronger than the hurricane's (up to 250 m.p.h.), and the U.S. death toll was higher.

The most poignant single tragedy befell the small (pop. about 1,200) community of East Coldenham, N.Y., 40 miles northwest of New York City. More than 120 children were eating lunch in the two-story cafeteria of an elementary school when a blast of wind estimated at 100 m.p.h. struck the yellow-brick-and-glass building. A massive section of the south wall crashed into the children in a hail of shattered glass, concrete and falling bricks. Some pupils who had been standing to watch the storm were tossed about like rag dolls. "I heard a whistling sound," said Mike Miller, 7. "Tables were flying. Bricks were flying. There was breaking glass. People were crying."

Teachers ran into the cafeteria rubble, clawing at debris to reach fallen children. Fire fighters sobbed as they freed trapped children, many of whom they knew. When the frantic rescue ended, seven youngsters were dead and 18 hospitalized, three with critical injuries.

The death toll was even higher in Huntsville, Ala. There too a school was struck by a tornado. Yet, although it was leveled, the timing -- about 4:30 p.m. -- was fortunate, since most of the children had left. But the twister that roared through the city killed 18, ranging in age from 2 to 67, and demolished 119 houses. "It just started shaking and tearing at everything it could get hold of," said real estate broker Ike Carroll. Jeweler Robert Husman, buried under debris in his demolished store, squirmed to the surface. "I came up looking at the taillights of a Toyota station wagon," he recalled. The wind had swept the car atop the fallen roof of the building.

The city's Westbury Mall was reduced to a heap of wreckage up to 14 ft. deep. The adjacent Waterford Square apartment complex was flattened. Most of the fatalities occurred at those two sites, as shoppers and residents had no time to flee the storm's assault. Terri-Lynn Frasher, 16, had been taking a shower in her apartment; she was pinned under a sink and vanity when her walls collapsed. Gashed by a broken mirror, she was pulled naked from the building. "I can't even say I lost everything but the clothes on my back," she said wryly from her hospital bed. Isolated motorists died as their cars were lifted and hurled off roads.

In almost mocking contrast to the weather's carnage in the eastern half of the U.S., a bright sun shone on San Francisco and Oakland as 11,000 people strolled onto the Bay Bridge in an advance celebration of its weekend reopening. The 50-ft. section of the upper deck that collapsed during the quake had been repaired well ahead of schedule in a round-the-clock $2.5 million construction feat. California Governor George Deukmejian cheerily declared, "We're back, and we're in business again."

* Yet the pain of the autumn's devastation persists. Hundreds of homeless still await permits to repair quake-damaged houses near the epicenter in the hills outside Santa Cruz, Calif. In South Carolina 6,000 Hugo victims remain in emergency housing. Authorities in Alabama must cope with 1,000 newly homeless and 463 injured residents in Huntsville alone. The damage and the suffering from the fall of '89 will be felt for years.

With reporting by Richard Behar/New York and Don Winbush/Atlanta