Carnage in "Tornado Alley"

Deadly twisters rip along the Texas-Oklahoma border, killing at least 59

Hilde Graf was watching TV last week in her Wichita Falls, Texas, home when a tornado warning flashed on the screen. She rushed to a window and spotted a huge cloud darkening the horizon. With the twister bearing down at about 70 m.p.h., she jumped into her car and raced to the Sikes shopping mall, which she thought had a basement storm shelter. But there was no shelter at the mall, and Graf, along with hundreds of shoppers, cowered on the concrete floors of the mall's stores as the storm struck and merchandise and broken glass hurtled like cannon shot through the air. Outside, the death-dealing funnel tossed cars hundreds of yards in the air, flattening some and buckling others. Inside the mall, there was carnage. "People were screaming, and there was blood all over the place," said Graf. "A man lay on top of me. His clothes were ripped to shreds, and he was covered with blood."

The twister was part of the worst tornado system to hit Texas since 1953, when 114 people were killed in Waco. One evening last week, perhaps as many as ten funnels roared down the Red River Valley, along the border of Texas and Oklahoma. The corridor is known as Tornado Alley because its springtime atmospheric conditions-warm air from the Gulf collides with cold fronts from the north-make it ripe for spawning twisters.

The first of last week's terrifying funnels hit Vernon, Texas, killing eleven and injuring 60. Others touched ground at Lawton, Okla., and Harrold, Texas, while a flurry of follow-up storms struck several Arkansas communities. By the time the skies cleared, at least 59 people had been killed and nearly a thousand injured, 200 of them critically. About 8,000 were homeless. With property damage estimated at close to $400 million, President Carter declared the stricken valley a major disaster area, making the survivors eligible for low-interest federal loans.

Wichita Falls (pop. 100,000) was hardest hit by far. There three tornadoes joined together, creating a huge funnel with winds estimated at 225 m.p.h. It sucked up roofs, tore huge limbs from trees, and lifted the debris as high as half a mile into the sky. Said Roy Styles: "I crawled under a mattress, and that's all that saved me because the walls fell in." Cindy Trott, 22, fled to a science building at Midwestern State University for safety. Said she: "It didn't look like a tornado until it got up close to you. Then you could see all the lumber and junk swirling around, and we were panicked." When the storm passed, she hurried to her family's home on the city's densely populated southwest side. It was leveled, along with some 2,000 other houses in the city.

Ida Martinez and her daughter Chastity Dawn, 4, sat out the storm in the bathroom of her apartment in the Sun Valley development, where the clocks stopped at 6:15 p.m. sharp. "I leaned my back against the door and listened to the building tearing apart," said Martinez. "I thought that I was going to die. Things started flying, mud and water started coming under the bathroom door, and I could hear people screaming for help." Although Sun Valley was almost completely destroyed, she and Chastity Dawn escaped unscathed. Just a few hundred yards away, however, several people dining at two restaurants were killed.

Reported TIME Correspondent Robert C. Wurmstedt from the devastated city: "Close to the center of the storm's path, which was eight miles long and up to two miles wide, the damage was staggering. Block after block of houses were flattened. Wrecked cars and small pleasure boats lay upside down in front yards and what had been living rooms and bedrooms. All 90 trailers at the Candlewood mobile home park were destroyed, their remains scattered for acres. Scrub trees were festooned with torn clothing, strips of insulation and scraps of metal. Huge 16-wheel trailer trucks were casually tossed into the middle of fields. Texas Governor William Clements, on a helicopter tour of the area, could barely comprehend the sight. 'These homes are not damaged,' he said. 'They are demolished, gone.' "

In the wake of the storm, volunteers pulled bodies from collapsed buildings and mangled autos. "The vacuum was so great that some people were sucked right out of their cars," said Police Sergeant Mike Hickman. The emergency rooms of local hospitals were jammed with bloodied victims. There was no electricity and no water; 400 National Guardsmen patrolled the city to prevent looting. The next morning, the survivors began to make neat piles of salvaged belongings in front of their wrecked houses: a few plates, a sewing machine, a bureau. "We can't find our pool table and our living room furniture," said Mark Harlass, 17. "They just blew away. And our freezer is in our next-door neighbor's house."

A few tried at first to profit from other people's plight, selling water at $1 a gal. and gasoline at $1.50 a gal., until city authorities imposed a 15-day price freeze. But most residents gamely pitched in to bring Wichita Falls back to life. Volunteers operating hundreds of bulldozers and trucks began to haul away the debris. The Red Cross set up six shelters to provide food and medicine. Free storage space and lodging were offered; so were pickup trucks to help with the moving. A local locksmith advertised his services for free, and a motel offered water from its swimming pool. Sanitation crews were out inspecting canned and bottled food at more than 100 damaged grocery stores. There was even a shelter for dazed and injured pets, which included over 200 dogs and cats. "One lady called and asked if we had her parrot, but we haven't seen it," said one of the aides at the center.

When electricity was restored to some of the city after 24 hours, restaurants and shops began reopening. But for most of the victims, it would be a long time before life returned to normal. Cindy Trott's family, for one, had only a few possessions left: among them a cabinet of crystal glasses that the twister perversely left untouched while pulling down the house around it.

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