NOWHERE TO RUN

By Belinda Luscombe

Sometimes even knowledge is useless. People in Texas know what to do in case of a tornado. Texans have in the past four decades endured more tornadoes and lost more lives and property to the storms than any other state. And May is the cruelest month for tornadoes. Of all the twisters recorded in the past 44 years, more than 21% hit in May. People in central Texas are used to spring tempests, when cold fronts from the north clash with warm, wet Gulf weather. They know enough to find a ditch to lie in, or a sturdy, windowless room in the center of the house, preferably under a mattress or in a bathtub. And the citizens of Jarrell, a small town 42 miles up the interstate from Austin, did have time to take precautions. Meteorologists, concerned with the unseasonably high dew points (it has been a bumper wild-flower season) were broadcasting warnings. Tornado sirens went off at 3:55 p.m., 10 minutes before the winds hit. But for those in the path of this twister, all that knowledge was in vain.

On the Fujita Scale of tornado intensity, an F5 is the worst measurement that can be registered. The twister that hit Jarrell was one of those, with winds estimated at more than 260 m.p.h. that stripped the hides off cows, upended 50,000-lb. garbage trucks, lifted the asphalt off the road and turned the Double Creek Estates subdivision, a community of about 75 homes and small businesses, into a dreary brown plain littered with rain-soaked lumber; jagged, anonymous pieces of metal; and the bare, black bellies of truck frames. Bruce Thoren, a National Weather Service meteorologist said the storm was "too large to outrun and too strong to have survived, unless you got away from the path." In its wake, half a mile wide and seven miles long, the twister left at least 27 people dead, nothing but bald concrete slabs in the ground where homes once stood, and a small town with big gaps among its chains of families and friends.

In these high-tech times, ranchers had used cell phones to call in warnings to their families as others watched Doppler Radar reports on Austin and Waco television stations. Al Clawson, the owner of a small recycling plant, was at home when the tornado siren went off. "I seen the tornado on TV, and I called my wife and daughters at the plant and told them to get in their cars and run," he says. And run they did. The twister was a malignantly playful one, first appearing as a single funnel, drawing back and then suddenly combining at least three twisters into one monster that came storming into Jarrell.

The Igo family did not stand a chance. All five of them, Larry and Joan, their twin sons John and Paul and daughter Audrey, rushed to their home next to Clawson's plant the moment the siren sounded--and apparently the twister chose to sweep in that direction. No one knows if the Igos sought shelter or tried to lie low to the ground or cover themselves with pillows, blankets or mattresses. Their home was leveled to its concrete foundation, and all that remained was the stripped and battered hulk of one of Larry's collection of '57 Chevys. In the frantic search for survivors, someone tacked a note to the front door of Larry's antique-auto-parts store: "Larry, Joan and the boys, I pray to God you read this. I have a motor home and travel trailer... Call me and tell me you made it. I'll bring you a place to stay."

While Jarrell was the most disastrously affected, tornadoes struck a wide area from Waco to hill country south of Austin. Elsewhere, however, the destruction in the path of the storm, which led to three other deaths, seemed almost whimsical. The roof was ripped off a supermarket in Cedar Park, but when shoppers who had taken refuge in the freezer section emerged, they saw apples and melons still neatly stacked in the produce department. Dan Wachoub was barbecuing in his backyard when he saw what appeared to be black smoke behind his home. He went inside and called the fire department. While he was finishing cooking his chicken and sausage, a fireman came by to tell him that a tornado had taken a big chunk out of his neighbor's home.

Miracles did happen. In Jarrell, Jim Davidson was surveying his flattened home with a sick heart, searching for some sign of his family, when he saw his wife Virginia a few hundred feet up the street. She had taken refuge in the bathtub, been carried through the air and landed alive. In Cedar Park, Caryl and Joe Simpson hid in the utility closet of their home with their four sons and family dog. It was the only room left standing. Back in Jarrell, Ladonna Peterson, her son, niece and mother-in-law squeezed into a bathtub. "It got dark, black, and I saw the funnel cloud coming toward us. It was as big as a church and solid black," Peterson told the Austin American-Statesman. Family members clung to one another and sang Jesus Loves Me. The bathroom door flew open, debris covered them, and suddenly it was over. They climbed out to find everything gone, except the bathroom.

But, for the most part, the search for survivors was a heartbreaking one, turning up only bodies and body parts. The passage of time brought burials, sorrow, numbness, the ebbing of hope. In the end, it seemed as if the resolve to rebuild was rekindled only because there was little else left to do.

--Reported by Hilary Hylton/Jarrell