Warnings likely kept Lawrence injuries low

By Steve Swartz

The Capital-Journal

LAWRENCE --- A tornado that heavily damaged 40 homes and apartment buildings in southwest Lawrence on Thursday night resulted in one minor injury.

A Lawrence police spokesman said the twister possibly was the weakened tail end of the massive tornado that struck Lyndon earlier in the evening. The tracking of that storm system likely kept injuries in Lawrence to a minimum.

"We were very fortunate we had early warning," said Mike Bradford, deputy chief of the Lawrence-Douglas County Fire and Medical.

Cindy Sumner, a resident of the Aberdeen apartments and townhomes complex, where eight buildings sustained significant damage, heeded the warning of sirens and TV meteorologists. Before taking shelter under a staircase in her second-story apartment, she opened an outside door. She described what many tornado survivors before her have observed.

"I sounded like a train," she said laughing. "Just like people say. My ears popped and then I got scared --- I felt lucky."

And for good reason. After the noise subsided, "we heard people outside screaming," said her friend, Derek McDonnell. No more than the length of three football fields to the east, the roof and second- story wall of an apartment building had been ripped away, exposing a couch that appeared to have been situated against the now-missing wall.

Justin Mullins, a University of Kansas student living in the Aberdeen townhomes north of the apartments, also heeded the warnings, but not until he had a good look at the funnel as it dropped to the ground.

Mullins said that when he saw the funnel and felt the air pressure change, he called for a neighbor to take shelter with him under a staircase in his garage. They covered themselves with a mattress and rode out the storm that ravaged buildings about 100 yards away.

In a 23rd Street Lawrence restaurant, the Zehr family had been tracking the storm as it passed through Osage County. They thought the tornado was on a course for Eudora and was going to miss south Lawrence, so they went home --- right into the path of the twister.

As they pulled into their driveway, about a third of a mile east of the Aberdeen complex, they saw the funnel, which Philip Zehr described as clear.

"It wasn't this big black thing," he said. "You identified where it was by the debris."

Zehr, his wife and his two teenage sons, who had moved out of the Aberdeen complex eight months ago after construction of their home was completed, took shelter in their walkout basement.

After the tornado touched down on the Aberdeen complex, it damaged Raintree Montessori School and then crossed Clinton Parkway and severely damaged 10 more homes.

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