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| Name: Brenda Stone Young From: I was raised in Kennard, IN E-mail: brendajail37@hotmail.com |
I was raised in Kennard, In and I was 10 yrs old when the tornado hit Kennard. I was going to a school in New Castle, In at the time. My mom and grandma came to pick me up early and a woman had told my mom that a bad storm was coming. The skies were beautiful that day, but I remember it started raining before we got into Kennard. My grandma was raised in Oklahoma and she knew about tornado all to well. She always told us stories of having to go to the storm shelter because tornado were common out west. I remember we went to my grandmas as soon as we got to Kennard and the phone rang. It was my aunt and she was working in Wilkinson at the time. She told my grandma that a tornado was headed toward us. It started hailing and it was huge. My grandma ran into the bedroom and said that we needed to run across the street to a basement. On the way a truck driver stopped and ask my grandma where we were headed. He picked my cousin up and went to the basement with us. I remember my mom looking out the window and it blew out in her face. When the storm was over we all came out of the basement to what seemed like a war zone. I remember passing people on the street that the family had known for years and nobody spoke they just walked right past like they were in shock. We went to the school where my oldest brother and cousin and grandpa was. The school was leveled, but everyone survived. They sent the National Guard to Kennard because people were coming into town and stealing. If you lived there you had to be in by nightfall and to a kid that's a scary scene..People were coming from all over to see the disaster, but a lot of people were looting. A lot of people moved from Kennard then and the one's that stayed rebuilt..Kennard was never the same after the tornado, but we all survived. My grandma had the most amazing pictures of the damage that a tornado can do. I hear a lot of people say they would like to see a tornado. I laugh and tell them one was enough for me...
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| Name: Jamie Baldy From: Ashridge, Alabama |
I lived in Ashridge, Alabama which is a small community adjacent to the bankhead national forest. As the weather turned worse, the lights went off in the house. My dad went to get a kerosene lantern, and opened the back door. He yelled for us all to get in the car, as we were going for shelter. Too late. We all ran to the car, and went a few yards when the storm became to violent for him to steer the car. The car was picked up from the road, and was circulating in the air. The windows blew out of the car, and my family was sucked out of the car one by one. So now we were all free spinning in the circulation. Soon we were all tossed out into a pasture. My Dad was hurt very badly, but he called to us all and we found him. Thankfully, we were all alive and together. My mom and I walked to the highway-this was very tedious because of her injuries, while my sister talked to my dad to keep him from going into shock. A man who happened to be traveling in a pick up stopped-we all worked to carry my dad to the truck in spite of everyone's injuries, and then that nice man transported us to the hospital. All of my family members except me had terrible injuries; we lost our home, car, and all of our belongings. But we were all still alive. That is something that can not be said for some of the other families. My heart goes out to those people. I do not understand how or why we lived, but I am grateful for each new day. And often remember those who were not as fortunate.
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| Name: R.A. Gray From: Tennessee E-mail: 2agray@lighttube.net |
I well remember the April outbreak. I was 7 years old and of course back then we had no warnings. There were no sirens and there was no such thing as a tornado warning in our area. I don't even know if they used the term, "strong storms" back then or not. It was about a 3 day event and is the only time in my life that I ever remember it being absolutely pitch black outside in the middle of the day. The street lights were on. It wasn't green. It wasn't yellow. It was flat out pitch black dark! And not just a passing storm. It was that way for most of the entire day. Very creepy. And the clouds were very low to the ground. You could almost reach up and touch them but so dark you couldn't see any rotation or anything. It was like night time. Of course all of us kids were shipped off to school regardless of the weather. It's still that way here. We did have tornado drills in school back then and I can still hear the tone coming over the intercom in the classrooms denoting either a drill or the real thing. I went to school in a typical 1950's flat top roof "modern" style school with lots of windows. There was a large central hall. I remember looking out the windows and even at 7 thinking it was really dark. No rain. No wind. No lightening - just dark and balmy. It was fairly warm out which is not unusual in the south during April but there was an unusual stillness and heaviness to the air. Very thick as we say. No birds chirping. Nothing seemed to move. I remember all of us being called into the hall and down on the floor in "the position" with head tucked. I don't know where the warning came from or whether the principle just felt it was dangerous out but I know he was probably terrified having that many children to be responsible for. I remember him walking up and down the long hall with a paddle and any kid that snickered or raised up got a swat because your b*** was up in the air. I'm sure he was trying to listen for the roar. School was let out early and that was the end of that until the evening. My parents had gone to a cotillion across town that evening and my older sister was baby sitting. The weather got really bad after dark. Very bad electrical storm and the wind really picked up. We all lived in 50's ranchers back then and the modern thing was the TV antenna wire running in behind to walls to a special wall plug. Lightening struck the antenna of the house next door and set the house on fire in behind the walls. My sister freaked out and called my mother at the cotillion who was enraged at her for bothering her! On that side of town nothing was going on yet and she thought my sister was lying. So we called my aunt to come stay with us. I remember seeing my aunt trying to come up the street with the fire trucks and cop cars and how hard it was raining watching her wipers just flying back and forth. Of course my aunt let my mother have it when she got home! Later that night another scare came and I remember my father jerking me out of bed and throwing me in the hall and throwing a matress over me. That particular tornado struck across town on Hwy 55 and hit the armory and the ball park. My cousin was coming home from a DJ'ing gig down 55 when it hit. It picked his car up off the ground and set it down on the opposite side of a 4 lane divided highway into oncoming traffic. Never a warning on the radio - no nothing. Much later that same evening into the wee hours of the morning I woke up. We slept with fans going in the bedrooms as we didn't have air conditioning in those days. Of course it had been storming out so all the windows were closed to keep the rain out. The power went out and I woke up from a thunder clap and the sound of the constant fan going. I heard a roar outside. Nobody else was awake but me and I went to the front door to find out what this roar was. As I remember even 35 year later, that roar was REALLY loud! You cannot mistake the roar of a tornado. I remember opening the wooden front door and then just touching the storm door latch with my finger and it ripped right off the hinges. The trees were bent over and it was lightening. My mother snatched me by the back of the neck of my pajamas and slammed the door and threw me under the mattress in the hall again. She said I absolutely scared her to death when I said I saw a giant upside down ice cream cone in the sky. The next morning we got up and it was all over the news about these tornados so Dad got us in the car and drove around. We found out that an F4 tornado had come within just a few blocks of our house! I saw it and tried to describe it to my Mother. The only thing I really remember about the destruction was a cow that was pinned between 2 trees. I just remember it being wave after wave after wave of these storms. It was kinda like the world was coming to an end. It was relentless for a couple of days. Never seen anything like it before or since and hope I don't again. We were all on pins and needles and didn't get much sleep those few nights. The news broadcasted the weather but back then it wasn't color doppler radar and you really couldn't make heads nor tails out of the fuzzy grey images you saw on the radar. They didn't talk tornadoes I guess because they didn't want to be responsible for panic. DUH! They would mention thunderstorms and that's about it. I didn't understand the difference between and thunderstorm and a tornado at that age. All we knew was that if the sky had a green sick hue to it and it got quiet and very warm - head for the hall! I'm serious. Those were the only instructions given to us as kids. We didn't know. That and if it started to lightening, Dad would always pull the annetenna plug out of the wall and unplug all radios, record players, tv's and appliances. You just sat there until the storm passed. Everybody did that back then. Almost everything was not grounded in those days. You shut all the windows too because my Grandmother got struck by lightening sitting in front of an open window peeling potatoes while listening to a radio that was plugged in. So you always unplugged everything in the house when a storm came up and that kept you from hearing any news. Just like so many people have said, "We heard something strange and went and looked out the window - AND THERE IT WAS!" YUP! I can identify with that! Now we have tornado horns in town but nobody pays any attention to them. I mean they don't run for cover immediately. We still look at that sky and that pretty much tells us what we need to know. Employers are bad about that here. You don't move unless you hear or see something. Keep working. You're just over-reacting. Its just so common here. "If you hear it you'll have plenty of time to get under something." Soceity still has a lot to learn.
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| Name: Jim From: Windsor, ON E-mail: jodelli@cogeco.ca |
I was 17 years old that April 3, and my parents had gone to a party in Detroit. News had come out by early Wednesday evening of the beginnings of the outbreak, so when t-storms started rolling in naturally I went out to the porch to have a look. Dusk was falling anyway so soon all that was visible were the lightning bolts behind the moving tree branches. My two kid sisters were watching TV and the older one told me about warnings coming on. One was for Oakland County north of us but the second one was SW of us so we grabbed the dog and went to the basement. It was number 30 on the Fujita map, and it missed us by a couple of miles, which in tornado terms is a healthy distance away. That evening my uncle happened to be across the road from a rink that got hit, and a casualty died in his arms. I felt especially sad much later reading about the three Ehret kids who were home alone that afternoon in Arrowhead, Xenia, OH. Michael, 16, and Sabina, 12, didn't make it.
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| Name: Greg From: Athens, Alabama |
The tornado outbreak occurred about six months before I was born. The area hardest hit near us was the trailer park in Tanner, Alabama. My dad was one of the guys who helped that night, searching for survivors and transporting people to the nearest hospital in Decatur. I once heard him say that the rescuers at the trailer park kept hearing a baby cry, but couldn't find it among the debris. They finally located the baby, unharmed, resting in the limbs of a tree.
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| Name: Robin H. B. From: Huntsville/Athens Alabama E-mail: rshb@comcast.net |
People are always trying to think of what their very first memory is. Well, mine was of that fatefull day on 04/03/74. I was only 3yrs old but I do have one memory of that day and several of the following days. My father was a state trooper in North Alabama and my mother worked for Chrysler (when Chrysler was Chrysler)in Huntsville as well as they owned a dress shop in what used to be the old Woolco shopping center back in 1974 at the corner of Sparkman Dr. and University. My father, of course, was on duty as he was for anything that required law enforcement. My very first memory is being held by my mother very tightly underneath the Sparkman overpass while tornadoes passed nearby. She told me that she held me so tight that people had to pry her fingers off of me. We did not live in Huntsville at the time, we lived in nearby Limestone County, which also had several tornadoes including an F5. Our house was not directly hit but my German Shepard went "missing". My mother to this day thinks he was taken in one of the twisters. I remember also, going with my father to our church at the time to help clean and rebuild, 1st Baptist Church of Tanner, it and so many houses around it were just flattened. I will never forget. At age 3 it really doesn't sink in what is going on. But I remember having to go "potty" and my father telling me there was no where to go. I didn't understand at the time. We knew everybody, why couldn't we go to someone's home? I didn't realize that all the homes were gone. I have also since survived the devastating November 89' tornado in Huntsville and several other close calls but I can't help my fascination with weather, especially tornadoes, and my oldest daughter has acquired the same. Everytime we have a warning we are both out scoping the best place for pictures, on full alert though, of course.
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| Name: Ron From: Lexington, KY E-mail: seriousaboutbg@yahoo.com |
I was 15 years old on 4-3-74 and lived in Lexington. To my knowledge, Neither Lexington or Fayette County was hit but most if not all of the counties surrounding were. I remember staying up late that night listening to WLAP. They were only able to broadcast because they had a generator. Most of the state of Kentucky The announcers were like beacons of hope that night. I wish I would have had the insight to record some of their broadcast. I actually contacted the station a few years ago and they didn't even record any of it. I'm sure that they were more concerned with relaying information then the fact that they were in the midst of making history. If by some chance any of you out there does have recordings of that night, I'd love to get a copy. email me at seriousaboutbg@yahoo.com THANKS!
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| Name: Gerald H. Kratz From: Miami, FL E-mail: kratzg@bellsouth.net |
On 3 April 1974, my wife and daughter and I were living on Monte Sano Mountain, just east of Huntsville, Albama. The mountain had a flat top, and was shaped like an upside-down and reversed capital letter "L". Our house was near the end of the horizontal portion of the "L", and our three and a half acre property ended on the south at a cliff. A tornado watch had been issued that evening, But our neighborhood was unconcerned, the common wisdom being that "tornados do not strike mountaintops". We were watching WHNT, whose transmitting tower was located near the south end of the vertical portion of the "L". On the weather radar, a new funnel had developed, and the station weather man was describing its course, when he suddenly noted that it was heading directly toward the station tower. About thirty seconds later, the channel went dead, and then the power went off. I stepped outside, and saw that the sky was completely covered by clouds, which were constantly illuminated by flashes of kelly green lightning, but there was no thunder and no bolts were striking the ground. There was total silence. On going back inside, we checked on our daughter, and found her awake, having been aroused when the power went off. As we sat at her bedside, we felt the earth suddenly shake, and then we heard a loud "boom", and then silence. After confirming that my wife and child were safe, I headed to Redstone Arsenal, where I was stationed as a medical officer. It was a hairy ride down the north end of the mountain in the dark, and I spent the next couple of days treating storm victims. Six tornados had crossed the county that night, including one with a funnel a couple thousand feet wide. Upon returning home a couple days later, I found the mountaintop in ruin, and the only road to the top was the winding north road, known as Bankhead Parkway. When we traced the path of the storm,we found that it had crossed the south end of the mountain, demolishing dozens of homes and damaging the TV transmitting tower. It had then dropped into the valley between the vertical and horizontal portions of the upside-down "L". Traveling north, it had struck the cliff on the south side of our property, producng the ground vibration we had felt, and the "boom" we had heard. The collision had temporarily caused the funnel to lift, as it passed over our house. About a half mile farther on, it had once again descended to the ground, and left a track of collapsed trees, marching northward as far as the eye could see.
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| Name: Delia Chandler From: Newark, Ohio E-mail: jetgirl37@hotmail.com |
April 3, 1974 was my 8th birthday. My father had taken me and my sister, Gayle, to an A&W Root Beer burger stand (the ones where you get served your burger, fries, and a frosty mug of root beer in the car, drive-in style)to celebrate. The weather had been hot and unsettled all day. Strange, I thought, it had snowed for my 7th b-day. When we arrived home to cake and gifts, Mom told us we may have to continue the party in the basement, as she had heard news of tornadoes heading our way. My father, being the sturdy man that he was, insisted we go outside and scout twisters. I remember searching anxiously towared the deep navy blue south-western skies, expecting a whispy silver funnel skip playfully down the hills. We thankfully didn't get hit, but that temultuous day spawned my life-long facination with tornadoes- a romantic facination, for I have been fortunate enogh not to have sufferd the tragedies those poor souls did that day.
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| Name: Greg From: Springville, IN |
Today, I am running on my computer a simulation model for climateprediction.net of the entire world weather scenario spanning from 1973 to 1975. I get up this morning and sit down with a cup of coffee to see where the model has progressed and I'm stunned to see the date that I will never forget. I was a college student at United Electronics Institute living in Shively, KY the afternoon when it all happened. The next day I rode my bicycle all over Louisville to see the devastation and take it all in. It wasn't until all of it was tallied about a week later that we found out the true magnitude of the "Supercluster" of twisters that had dropped from the heavens upon us all. Over the past 35 years I've seen enough Climate Change to know that we have to get better at predicting our impact or this kind of extreme weather will become much more frequent. Guess I'll get back at it... Restarting task hadam3p_ndyp_1973_2_006166587_1
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