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Tornado leaves trail of debris
CENTERVILLE -- Safety was in the basement, and Richard Clarrey knew he needed to get there. He trekked across the bathroom. Slowed by his wheelchair, he never made it. A powerful gust of wind launched a door onto Clarrey, pinning him in the doorway.
"I hope I don't have to go through anything like this again," he said later.
Fortunately for Clarrey, the tornado that uprooted trees and homes in rural Linn County on Wednesday night left his rental home standing upright. However, wind shattered windows throughout the house, broke down doors and tossed shingles off the roof.
Unfortunately for Clarrey, he was one of two rural residents injured from one of three tornados that swept across rural Linn County around 7 p.m. Wednesday.
He suffered a cut on his right knee and multiple cuts on his right arm and chest. The cuts didn't require medical attention.
Clary's house sits on the property of Wes Ungeheger, who owns and operates Wes' Recycling Inc., which sustained a direct hit from the twister. The tornado destroyed three storage buildings, the metal fence surrounding the business, and numerous junked vehicles. Total damages came to about $250,000, Ungeheger said.
The biggest impact of the storm was felt about one-quarter mile away, the place Dave Matthes used to call home.
The winds lifted up the house, scattering and destroying nearly all its contents along the countryside.
Matthes was in a corner of the basement when the tornado leveled the house, which was located on Linn County Highway 1077, about three miles south of Centerville and about 40 miles northwest of Fort Scott.
He made it through the disaster without injury.
Matthes told a Kansas City TV station reporter that he plans to rebuild in the same spot.
Along with the house, three other structures were uprooted by the twister: a detached garage, a metal barn and a wooden barn. The storm killed and injured several of Matthes' cattle.
On Thursday, Matthes' friends and neighbors were there to pick up the pieces -- literally. About a dozen residents rummaged through the debris, saving what they could and pitching the debris into piles.
"This is tough, going through all this stuff that probably meant so much to him (Matthes)," said Brett Dickinson, who lives about one-third of a mile away from Matthes' house. "There's a lot of memories here."
Dickinson's home escaped damage, a few tree limbs broke off into his yard, and the doors of his barn were ripped apart.
He and his family took cover in a bathroom in the center area of the house.
"They say you hear a train roar or something like that, but I didn't hear nothing like that," Dickinson said. "Basically, all I heard was the wind blowing through our trees."
After the wind ceased, he walked outside and looked toward Matthes' house and then toward the northeast. That's when Dickenson saw a "big ball of black," apparently the cloud that spawned the tornado.
"I looked up toward this way (in the direction of the Matthes house) and the visibility wasn't very good. I walked toward the road to see if I could see anything...unfortunately there wasn't anything to see. The house was gone."
George Kellerman, who lives in Centerville, said there have been a couple of twisters that have hit the area in the last five to 10 years, but this storm inflicted the greatest amount of damage.
"It was one the worst I've seen around here in a long time," Kellerman said.
Kellerman said he instructed his family to go into the home's storm cellar. He stayed upstairs and held a National Weather Service radio up to his ear, trying to listen to warnings, but the crashes of falling quarter-inch size hail drowned out the radio's sound.
"It was so loud," Kellerman said.