12-year-old dies when thrown from home

By Sam Blackwell

Southeast Missourian

MARBLE HILL, Mo. -- Many survivors of the tornado that killed 12-year-old Billy Hoover and injured at least 12 others early Sunday said they didn't know a storm with winds of up to 200 mph was bearing down on them. The tornado splintered trees, made whole houses disappear and tossed around cars along a four-mile-long stretch just south of Marble Hill. Many rescue workers said they'd never seen anything like the devastation they likened to "a war zone."

The National Weather Service had not posted a tornado warning when the storm hit between 12:40 and 12:45 a.m. Sunday. Kyle Sutherland, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Paducah, Ky., said rotation was seen in the storm on radar. "But it didn't meet the criteria needed to issue a tornado warning," he said in Marble Hill Sunday while surveying damage.

Bollinger County went under a tornado watch at 11:12 p.m. Saturday, and a severe thunderstorm warning was issued at 12:34 a.m., just before the tornado touched down.

Many of those who survived said they went to bed without knowing severe weather was coming in and were awakened by hail and the sound of trees snapping just before the tornado hit.

Traveling at a speed of 55 mph, the tornado carved a swath 3/4 mile wide in the rural area. It first touched down about seven miles southwest of Marble Hill and followed an east by northeast route. It followed County Road 512 for some distance before crossing Highway PP and wracking a group of houses and cabins on Lake of the Hills.

The same storm stayed aloft over Cape Girardeau County, crossed the Mississippi River and dealt more destruction in Dongola, Ill., before making another leap and touching ground again in McLean County, Ky. Trees were uprooted, power lines were down and several homes and businesses were destroyed when the tornado passed through Dongola, Ill., at 1:33 a.m. Sunday.

Six people were injured and one was killed when the tornado ripped through the town.

The number of Bollinger County families made homeless by the storm was estimated at 12 to 15. Mary Burton, executive director of the Cape Girardeau County Chapter of the American Red Cross, said those who aren't staying with family or friends will be lodged in area motels until more long-term housing can be arranged.

Thrown hundreds of feet

Billy Hoover was staying overnight with his friend, Dalton Toombs, at the Toombs' house on County Road 512. Six people were in the house when the tornado hit. Billy was thrown a distance of several hundred feet when the tornado demolished the frame house. His body wasn't found until hours later.

Tim Abner, who coached Billy's Marble Hill Optimist basketball team, said he was an outgoing boy who loved sports. All 15 members of the team were close, Abner said.

"This is just hard to believe," he said.

Sunday, nothing remained of the three-bedroom house but the slab foundation. No one in the Toombs family is sure how anyone survived.

Terry Toombs, Dalton's father, was treated at a Cape Girardeau hospital for a crushed toe. Brothers Alfrd and Bobby Tombs was sleeping in a mobile home parked about a hundred feet from the house. The mobile home is twisted and roofless. But Alfrd was injured only when he stepped on something sharp in the aftermath.

Most of the injuries resulting from the storm were broken ribs, arms and legs. Two people were injured seriously. Four remained hospitalized in Cape Girardeau Sunday night. Some of the injured were taken to hospitals by helicopter.

The names of all of the injured were not available Sunday night.

Some survivors of the Sunday morning tornado spent the day trying to salvage washers and dryers and clothing. Along County Road 512, where cars were stacked atop cars and a tractor-trailer was turned upside down, some survivors sat shellshocked, realizing they were fortunate to be alive.

Dumped into lake

Linda and Richard Meyers were dumped into the small lake near their mobile home on County Road 512. Both are hospitalized at St. Francis Medical Center with broken legs. A quarter-sized limb speared the calf of his other leg.

Sister-in-law Cindy Kirkpatrick of Glenallen, Mo., said their trailer rolled over into the lake. She was trapped inside for more than an hour. Richard Meyers managed to get to the bank where some teen-agers helped him out and eventually rescued his wife.

"They said if boys had not gone in she would have drowned," Kirkpatrick said.

Many trees were uprooted along the gravel road that runs to the Lake of the Hills, a development where some large homes across the lake were untouched.

Betty and Jon Hastings were in bed in the lower floor of their house on Lake of the Hills when the tornado hit. The devastation occurred almost as soon as they hit the floor. "It was a matter of seconds," she said.

Only their lower floor of their house was still intact Sunday.

Friends with chainsaws were helping them clear some of the debris away so they could salvage the few belongings that were not blown away.

"That's Marble Hill," she said. "When there's a problem, they'll be here."

Family members from St. Louis already had arrived by Sunday morning to help the couple sort out what was left of their house. "There are just not quite enough hugs," she said when a family member came up from behind to give her a squeeze.

Trapped for hours

Next-door neighbors Eddie and Jean Graham were not as fortunate. They were trapped under debris for hours after their log cabin was destroyed. Nobody could lift the timbers off them and they were afraid of injuring them, some of the survivors said.

Three members of the Humes family from High Ridge, Mo., and an 11-year-old friend were in the family cabin on Lake of the Hills Saturday night. Christina Humes, a 20-year-old student at Southeast, said they had no warning other than thunder and lightning. The four of them barely got in the bathroom when the windows began breaking.

A tree fell on the van Mike and Tess Humes were sleeping in outside, but they were not injured.

The cabin escaped with relatively little damage. The dock was in three pieces.

"We're just all lucky we're here," Tess Humes said.

Afterward, all they could do was wait in the moonlight for help to arrive.

Jim Bollinger, the Bollinger County's director of emergency management, said as many as 70 buildings, including barns and sheds, may have been damaged or destroyed. That includes 15 to 20 houses and mobile homes.

Bollinger was walking on crutches Sunday after pulling a tendon trying to move a tree out of a road.

Search and rescue workers toiled through the night looking for people with injuries while firefighting teams from many area jurisdictions cleared the gravel roads that lead to the two hardest hit locations. Mark Holland showed up with a bulldozer that enabled County Road 512 to be cleared much more quickly.

"It makes you proud of the community," Bollinger said.

Response from all over

The Cape Girardeau office of Emergency Management mobile unit set up a command post at the junction of highways FF and PP. Non-emergency vehicles were kept off the road for much of the morning. Later in the day, the post was moved to Mount Pleasant Baptist Church near the intersection of Highway FF and County Road 512.

Firefighters from Jackson, Marble Hill, Sedgewickville, Stoddard County, Wayne County, Cape Girardeau County, Bollinger County, Zalma, Wappapelo, Advance, Leopold, Greenville and Piedmont responded to the call for aid.

Emergency management teams from Cape Girardeau and Stoddard counties also pitched in.

Brownie Troop 28 in Marble Hill brought food donated to the rescue workers by Country Mart. Americorps volunteers were out helping with the cleanup.

Mark Winkler, district coordinator of the state Office of Emergency Management, toured the destruction Sunday afternoon. Bollinger County Presiding Commissioner Kenneth Trentham was along.

Sutherland, the meteorologist, was in Bollinger County Sunday to gauge the strength of the tornado to give it a classification, which is based on the amount of damage done. He classified Sunday morning's tornado an F3 with winds ranging from 158 to 206 mph.

He said Marble Hill is at a disadvantage because it lies at the edge of the National Weather Service radar coverage from St. Louis and from Paducah.

"Radar's like a tool," Sutherland said. "Sometimes it doesn't show the whole picture."

Bollinger said the National Weather Service Saturday night was "heeing and hawing over whether or not to post a tornado warning," which would have activated sirens in Marble Hill. But he doubted whether that warning would have made any difference to the people in this tornado's path.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182

Cleanup begins after homes demolished in Dongola

By Heather Kronmueller

Southeast Missourian

DONGOLA, Ill. -- A tornado ravaged Dongola in the wee hours of Sunday morning, plucking hundreds of trees from the ground, snapping power lines in half and demolishing homes and businesses throughout the town.

One of the town's 750 residents -- 69-year-old Janie Chamness -- died when the storm tore through her mobile home. Six others were injured.

Meteorologist Jim Packett with the National Weather Service in Paducah, Ky., said the tornado was classified as an F3, producing average wind speeds of 180 miles per hour, and hit Dongola at about 1:33 a.m., less than an hour after another tornado hit Marble Hill, Mo.

As friends sifted through the debris from Donna Goins' home Sunday afternoon, one of them came out of the house with a handful of Goins' porcelain angel collection.

"I found your angels," the woman said with a smile. "And they're not even scratched!"

Goins stared in disbelief.

Then another friend came out of the house.

"I have some too," she said. "They're not scratched either."

Again, Goins just stared at her friends and the once-beautiful home behind them.

"I had angels in my bedroom, and they aren't even scratched," she said. "I guess they kept their hands upon us."

Mother warned her

Goins had been sleeping on a couch in the living room at 1:18 a.m. when her mother called to warn her the storm was headed her way. Her mother and sister live in the same neighborhood three miles south of the Goins' home in Dongola.

"I told her to bring my sister and her three children up here because we have a basement," she said. "When they got here they came in, I shut the door and locked it and said 'We better get in the back room.'"

As she turned her back toward the basement door she heard a noise like a freight train. The next thing she knew the windows had been blown in and debris was flying all around her.

"It's amazing, nobody was hurt, not even a scratch," she said.

When the sun came up Sunday morning, Goins and her husband saw the scope of damage the tornado had done to their house.

The entire front room, including the couch Goins had been sleeping on, had been sucked out of the house and strewn across the front yard and nearby Dongola Lake.

By 8 a.m. the Red Cross, Federal Emergency Management Agency and several volunteers from surrounding towns and counties were busy cutting down tree limbs, sweeping the roads and cleaning up debris throughout the town.

Still hanging by paper clip

Opal Osman, an 81-year-old woman who lives alone in her Dongola home, didn't know the storm was coming until she heard something beating against her windows.

"I just heard a noise like sticks or hail hitting the windows, and I got up," she said. "I didn't even get to the basement and it was gone."

When she walked outside to survey her yard, she discovered that all of her trees were either on their sides, cracked in half or leaning over the road.

"It's really something," she said. "My trees are down, but I have a hummingbird feeder that hangs on the back gutter by a paper clip and it's still there."

Across town, Wanda Snell and her 16-year-old daughter Ashley thanked God no one was living in the single wide trailer next to their house.

The Snells own the trailer and had been renting it to a disabled woman up until Friday.

"She just moved out, and we had found someone who wanted to buy it," Wanda Snell said.

When the tornado passed through Dongola it lifted the trailer, turned it upside down and placed it on top of Snell's husband's truck.

The only thing not damaged was the small wooden deck that once stood at the rear of the trailer.

Only slight damage, like a few missing shingles and a broken door hinge, was done to the Snell house.

Son driving home

Burna Ryan couldn't believe no one in her home was injured in the storm.

She and her youngest son, 20-year-old Justin DeWitt, were sleeping when the phone rang around 1:15 a.m.

It was her oldest son, 26-year-old John DeWitt, who was driving home from Anna, Ill.

"He called me on his cell phone and told me it was coming," Ryan said. "I crawled into the kitchen, but it was as far as I could go. I didn't even have time to get to my son or the basement."

The storm blew out the windows in Ryan's kitchen and knocked a tree onto the side of her house.

Ryan said when John DeWitt finally made it home the storm had passed.

"I'm just thankful everybody's OK," Ryan said. "There's a tree laying on the house and trees on the automobiles, but nobody's hurt."

The Dongola School District will be closed today, and the high school was converted to a storm shelter.

About 2,000 customers in the Shawnee Region of AmerenUE were without power Sunday, most in the Dongola and Cypress areas, said AmerenUE spokesman George Sheppard.

"I can't predict a timeline for when power will be restored because we don't know," he said. "It is going to be sometime."

City officials said they were told it might be Wednesday before the power is back on.

hkronmueller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 128