"Whole Roofs Just Exploded"

Betty and Sonny Gosnell were just sitting down in their living room with an insurance agent to sign a policy for health coverage when the twilight turned pitch-black and a dreadful noise broke the evening stillness. "It sounded like a big, huge-engined train coming," recalled Mrs. Gosnell. "Then you heard things around you crumbling, snapping. It sounded like popcorn popping."

In an instant, the tornado was upon them. Unable to reach their basement because of the glass shards whipping through the air, the Gosnells huddled on the floor. By the time the storm abated, a stop sign poked through the ceiling of their son's room and an exercise machine had been transplanted from their bedroom to their daughter's. The front yard looked freshly plowed and the few trees still standing had been stripped of their leaves. The Gosnell's hometown of Atlantic, Pa. (pop. 225), had been leveled, its feed mill, post office, general store and gas station all destroyed. Even the green spring wheat had been ripped right out of the ground.

Spawned by a violent storm that stretched from Canada to Texas, a pack of killer tornadoes rolled from Wisconsin to New York last Friday, leaving hundreds injured and at least 86 dead, 60 of them in Pennsylvania. The twister knocked out power lines and flattened scores of houses and small factories. In some places, the winds were accompanied by hailstones the size of golf balls. It was the worst tornado disaster since 1974, when a rogue storm ravaged the South and Midwest and took 315 lives.

In eastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania and southern Ontario, the hardest hit areas, dozens of roiling black spouts hopscotched across the countryside. It took just ten seconds for a twister to rip through a shopping center in Beaver Falls, Pa., tossing autos through plate glass windows as it went. "There was debris coming out of the top of the funnel," said Fireman Paul Gorby. "It was like a big runaway locomotive." The tornado peeled off the center's roof like a box top; rescue workers had to bring in a crane to lift fallen steel , girders that were pinning bodies below. Two people died and 30 were injured.

In Niles, Ohio, Toni Bonanno stepped out of an office building to confront a tornado roaring down the street. "Oh, God, please help me," she gasped. As she ducked in a doorway, the blast blew out the windows and tore off the roof. But she was unhurt. The twister cut a 200-ft.-wide swath through 3 1/2 miles of the town, killing at least eight. "There's nothing standing," said Niles Resident Betty Pompo. "Everything is completely wiped out. The people are walking around in circles."

In Albion, Pa., "whole roofs just exploded," said Fire Fighter Fred Kiedaisch. "There was debris 100 feet in the air -- houses, trees, poles, even outboard motors." Afterward, police canine teams searched the rubble for bodies. They found nine, with 20 still missing by morning.

The storm was capricious. At John's Bar & Grill in Evans City, 23 miles north of Pittsburgh, about 70 horrified customers hit the floor when a twister hovered overhead. The tornado razed surrounding buildings but spared the saloon.

The moments of tragedy were sometimes mixed with heroism. Umpiring a Little League baseball game in Wheatland, Pa., David Kostka, 32, a postal worker, saw a black funnel bearing down on the field. He raced into the stands to grab his niece Crista Warrender and another child. He threw them in a ditch and covered them with his body. Then the tornado touched down. When the little girl looked up, her uncle was gone, another victim of the deadly storm.