Survivors Dig Out From Tornadoes’ Devastation

KNOB NOSTER, Mo. —  Covered in grime, newlyweds Tina and Roger Werneke began Monday to carefully collect the shards of their lives and place them into garbage bags.

Picking through the mud where their mobile home once stood amid rural rolling green hills in west-central Missouri, the Wernekes found Tina’s communion dress, its white lace still crisp and pristine in a sealed bag. A set of stones the couple had hand-painted with their names and placed in their garden remained untouched, as were their high school rings, boxed with other belongings for a scheduled move.

But a 30-year-old family collection of Raggedy Ann dolls was mostly gone, and the family cats were missing.

“It’s tough, but we’re all safe,” said Tina, 27, a receptionist.

From Kansas to Missouri to Illinois, other victims of the weekend’s massive wave of tornadoes spent Monday salvaging what they could from crushed stores and crumpled homes.

Winds cut about a 400-mile swath across the central Mississippi Valley, and early reports from the national Storm Prediction Center estimated that as many as 110 tornadoes touched down Sunday in the Midwest, the most in a single day in March in 16 years. Ten people in two states were killed.

Officials at the National Weather Service, however, said that it could take weeks to confirm the actual number of tornadoes that hit Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas and Illinois over the weekend.

Some of the tornadoes were a half-mile wide in places, and devoured up to 10-mile stretches of rural landscape, uprooting barns and farmhouses.

The victims included a 28-year-old man in Indiana, who emergency personnel believe drowned after falling from a boat on Indian Creek near Owensburg in Greene County, and a couple in Missouri who inadvertently drove directly into the path of a tornado.

Four people were killed in and around Renick, Mo., including Billy Briscoe, 60, and his wife Pennie, 57. Across the couple’s neighborhood, mobile homes were peeled apart like tin cans and tree limbs clogged the streets, according to law enforcement officials.

As tornado sirens howled in the night, the couple ignored the pleas of friends to leave their mobile home. When the storm hit, it sounded like “a train running across the sky -- it happened so fast,” Jim Doughtery, a neighbor of the Briscoes, told local TV reporters.

The couple’s bodies were found in the crushed remains of their home, said Moberly, Mo., Police Sgt. Kevin Palmatory.

“The community’s in shock over the damage and the fatalities,” Palmatory said. “Tornadoes aren’t a common thing for us.”

On Monday, heavy rains in Indiana left the rivers swollen and roads swamped; drivers had to be rescued from stalled vehicles. University of Kansas officials shut down the campus in Lawrence after the storms damaged 60% of its buildings. Insurance adjusters fielded calls from policyholders frantic to tally the damage to thousands of homes, businesses and community assets.

After the storms cut through Illinois’ state capital of Springfield, the damage was so severe that public schools were closed and nonessential state employees were told to stay home. About two dozen people were injured in the storm.

“Around 3 a.m., we were all outside with chain saws, trying to hack our way through the debris,” said Harry Stirmell, president of the village of Jerome, a suburb southwest of Springfield where one of the tornadoes touched down. “We’ve been working nonstop since, and trees and cars and garbage still fill all our streets.”

Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich has declared seven Illinois counties as state disaster areas, and noted in a statement, “We will commit whatever state assistance is needed to help get their city up and running again.”

But Monday, it was clear that Missouri was among the hardest hit. At least 90 of the 110 tornado reports came from Missouri, where the state began observing Severe Weather Awareness Week on Monday. Emergency management and National Weather Service officials were planning to conduct a statewide tornado drill today.

Missouri averages 26 tornadoes a year, said Andy Foster, a meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service office in Springfield, Mo. In 2003, the state broke its annual record with a total of 84 tornadoes.

The Wernekes consider themselves lucky: They had recently sold the mobile home that was destroyed and had expected to move into a new double-wide trailer Sunday. But the delivery company couldn’t get to their property over the weekend -- it was too windy to transport the trailer.

As the couple and their friends wandered from debris pile to debris pile Monday afternoon just outside Knob Noster (population 2,700), they shivered when a cold wind cut across their devastated home. Yet the impromptu scavenger’s hunt unearthed unexpected gems. A wedding ring pillow. Some of the couple’s photo albums.

“Hey, I found another pack of your cigarettes, Roger!” one friend hollered, plucking the intact package from the rubble.

Tina’s uncle John Allen commiserated with the couple. Allen, a 51-year-old school custodian, had fled his home after a newscast warned of the path the storm was taking.

Desperate to find shelter, he tore out of his driveway, pulled into a nearby grove of trees and hunkered down. Looking out the window, he said, he could see chunks of metal flying overhead. “It only just lasted a few seconds, but it scared me to death.”

When he returned home, there was little left that was salvageable. An overturned toilet. A dresser with yellow sheets. And enough food to fill a cardboard box for a meal of canned mackerel and packaged sausage.

“This is the worst weather we’ve had in years,” said Karen Eagleson, director of the emergency management team for Johnson County, Mo. The county, which encompasses Knob Noster, is located about 90 minutes southeast of Kansas City, Mo.

Seven tornadoes struck the 830-square-mile area Sunday.

“I hope this isn’t a precursor for what’s to come,” Eagleson said. “I hope we’re done with it. But this is just the beginning of our season.”