Hallam's heartbreak
HALLAM — Black clouds still hung over Hallam early Sunday as residents returned to see what was left of the place they call "The Little Town With A Big Heart."
The morning-after carnage left by one or more tornadoes was enough to break 300 individual hearts.
The monster storm that plowed into the 112-year-old town from the southwest about 9 p.m. Saturday killed at least one resident, sent at least 37 more to Lincoln hospitals and reduced the town to rubble.
"It is utter and complete devastation," said incident commander Pat O'Brien as he surveyed a scene swarming with emergency crews and national guard members. "It's an awesome display of Mother Nature's power."
The same storm front pounded Southeast Nebraska, producing at least 18 confirmed tornadoes. It leveled at least 158 homes, seriously damaged at least 57 others and left a wide swath of destruction as far west as Furnas County.
That included more than 30 homes destroyed or severely damaged in Clatonia and a half-dozen homes near Norris school, which was also heavily damaged. Seven homes and a business were destroyed in Wilber.
But nowhere was the storm's viciousness more apparent than in Hallam, 25 miles southwest of Lincoln.
Railroad cars tipped on their sides. Trees 3 feet thick broken and twisted into barren stubs. A litter of tin, broken lumber and downed power wires everywhere underfoot.
Storm chaser and Weather Channel forecaster Matt Crowther said the tornado or tornadoes covered a path a half-mile wide, moving almost straight east through Hallam.
Several tornado tails or suction spots may have been swirling beneath one supercell, or several smaller tornadoes were clustered around the main funnel.
The result was either a significant F3 or F4 tornado, Crowther said. Only about 1 percent of all tornadoes reach the intensity of an F4 or higher, where wind speeds exceed 207 mph, enough to level homes and turn cars into missiles.
The damage was so pervasive that O'Brien, assistant chief of Hallam's 21-member volunteer fire department, was uncertain whether the town could rebuild.
Said Gov. Mike Johanns after touring the scene: "The damage in Hallam is absolutely unbelievable. It wasn't a quick ordeal. The storm settled down on Hallam and just beat that community. Buildings and trees were annihilated."
Johanns declared a state of emergency covering Lancaster, Saline, Gage and Cass counties. Other counties suffering damage included Webster, Adams, Clay, Thayer and Fillmore counties.
Later Sunday, he requested a presidential disaster declaration for Nebraska.
"Hallam was at the epicenter," Johanns said. "With Hallam, you're literally going to be rebuilding from the ground up."
Not far away from O'Brien, postmaster Kelly Peterson, husband Duane and Jim Nelson of Lincoln postal headquarters scrambled through the collapsed jumble of bricks that had been a sturdy post office. They were trying to recover some of the mail that was inside Saturday night.
"What astounds me is how everything is just crashed in," Kelly Peterson said.
Officials planned to close the town by 8 p.m. Sunday, meaning all residents had to leave for the second time in as many days. Salvage work will start today, O'Brien said.
By 12:30 p.m. Sunday, about 60 residents and friends had gathered at a crossroads a few blocks east of town, waiting to return to their shattered homes. The crowd had more than doubled before the first were allowed to enter shortly after 2 p.m.
Meanwhile, a constant parade of cars crawled past the State Patrol checkpoint.
In and outside of town, stories of near-death experiences emerged with afternoon sunshine:
* Beth and John Isakson, owners of 24 Arabian horses, said they fled to their basement as the tornado approached and the pressure on their ears became unbearable.
"It sounded like a train was going over the top of us," she said. "It was really, really loud."
Bricks shook loose from the walls. They were showered in dust. When it was all over they went upstairs to find the tornado shattered their windows and sucked out many of their possessions.
It destroyed the barn and pen the horses were in. Flying wreckage gashed their hides, and others were trapped by falling trees and had to be freed with a chain saw.
"They had a tough night," Beth Isakson said. The good news: The cuts appeared relatively minor.
One horse appeared to have a broken leg, meaning it may be euthanized.
* Bob Fahrnbruch was upstairs in his house when he heard the hail stop and the wind suddenly become quieter.
"This is it," he said as he joined nine others in the basement. The tornado hit within minutes.
Family members and neighbors were crouched and crying beneath a pingpong table. Some were praying. His son kept repeating that they were going to die.
He could hear the wind rushing through the false ceiling in the basement and thought it odd there was wind in the house, not realizing that his upper floors were already gone.
A few minutes later, he looked next door to the house in which 73-year-old Elaine Focken died, noting that it appeared to have caved in upon itself.
Focken died after being struck by debris, according to Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner.
"This is all replaceable," Fahrnbruch said of his $105,000 ranch home. "But it still feels like a nightmare. I know I'm not, but I feel like I'm going to wake up."
* Along an east-west road about three miles south of Hallam, Pat Christian said she and son Kendal cowered in a red Chevette with its glass smashed out after the tornado ripped their log house from its foundation and tossed a pickup truck into a lagoon.
They tore carpeting off the car's floor to protect their heads from a secondary hailstorm and waited until 1:30 a.m. for floodwaters to recede from a gravel road so rescue personnel could reach them.
Yes, said Pat Christian, she has insurance — "and an almighty God."
* Less than a mile to the west, Gail Easton, sister Becky Simpson and Simpson's daughter, Stephani Rust, huddled in a bathtub as the tornado lifted Easton's house from its foundation and then blew it apart.
Before the house went, "the wind pounded the walls and the walls vibrated like the back side of a drum," Rust said.
Friend Jim McKay ducked down between a washing machine and a dryer. "And when it got finished," Easton said, "he was standing in the washer."
"We insulated each other and buffered for each other," Rust said. "All three of us needed to be in that tub and all three of us reached that tub just in time."
When the tornado's roar moved away, the three shoeless women and McKay retreated westward into the darkness with a single flashlight, pelted by hailstones, stepping over power lines and wading through water to get to a house that had not been destroyed.
"We were guided by lightning," said Easton.
"The mile-and-a-half walk, I think, was more of an adventure than standing in the tub," Simpson said.
* A bit farther west, 85-year-old Hazel Hartsook was home alone because her daughter and son-in-law, Jean and Richard Schnieder, had gone to Wichita, Kan. Their daughter, who was supposed to stay overnight, had left for a dance recital in Crete.
When that house was destroyed, Hartsook sat in the rain until midnight waiting for help. Eventually, a rescue team from Pickrell found her.
She was in a Lincoln hospital Sunday.
* Derek Dragoo waited out the storm in the beer cooler of the Wild Goose Saloon at 303 Main St.
Roughly 10 people piled into the cooler's aisle.
As Dragoo, 36, pulled the cooler's door shut, the tornado smashed out the bar's windows, he said.
"It sounded like everything in the bar was being tossed around," said Dragoo, a member of Hallam's village board.
Dragoo said he'd seen other tornadoes, but nothing like the one that ravaged Hallam.
"It's definitely not going to be the same town."
Reach Art Hovey at (402) 523-4949 or ahovey@journalstar.com. Journal Star staff writers Andrew Nelson, Leah Thorsen, Don Walton and Mark Andersen contributed to this report.
The morning-after carnage left by one or more tornadoes was enough to break 300 individual hearts.
The monster storm that plowed into the 112-year-old town from the southwest about 9 p.m. Saturday killed at least one resident, sent at least 37 more to Lincoln hospitals and reduced the town to rubble.
"It is utter and complete devastation," said incident commander Pat O'Brien as he surveyed a scene swarming with emergency crews and national guard members. "It's an awesome display of Mother Nature's power."
The same storm front pounded Southeast Nebraska, producing at least 18 confirmed tornadoes. It leveled at least 158 homes, seriously damaged at least 57 others and left a wide swath of destruction as far west as Furnas County.
That included more than 30 homes destroyed or severely damaged in Clatonia and a half-dozen homes near Norris school, which was also heavily damaged. Seven homes and a business were destroyed in Wilber.
But nowhere was the storm's viciousness more apparent than in Hallam, 25 miles southwest of Lincoln.
Railroad cars tipped on their sides. Trees 3 feet thick broken and twisted into barren stubs. A litter of tin, broken lumber and downed power wires everywhere underfoot.
Storm chaser and Weather Channel forecaster Matt Crowther said the tornado or tornadoes covered a path a half-mile wide, moving almost straight east through Hallam.
Several tornado tails or suction spots may have been swirling beneath one supercell, or several smaller tornadoes were clustered around the main funnel.
The result was either a significant F3 or F4 tornado, Crowther said. Only about 1 percent of all tornadoes reach the intensity of an F4 or higher, where wind speeds exceed 207 mph, enough to level homes and turn cars into missiles.
The damage was so pervasive that O'Brien, assistant chief of Hallam's 21-member volunteer fire department, was uncertain whether the town could rebuild.
Said Gov. Mike Johanns after touring the scene: "The damage in Hallam is absolutely unbelievable. It wasn't a quick ordeal. The storm settled down on Hallam and just beat that community. Buildings and trees were annihilated."
Johanns declared a state of emergency covering Lancaster, Saline, Gage and Cass counties. Other counties suffering damage included Webster, Adams, Clay, Thayer and Fillmore counties.
Later Sunday, he requested a presidential disaster declaration for Nebraska.
"Hallam was at the epicenter," Johanns said. "With Hallam, you're literally going to be rebuilding from the ground up."
Not far away from O'Brien, postmaster Kelly Peterson, husband Duane and Jim Nelson of Lincoln postal headquarters scrambled through the collapsed jumble of bricks that had been a sturdy post office. They were trying to recover some of the mail that was inside Saturday night.
"What astounds me is how everything is just crashed in," Kelly Peterson said.
Officials planned to close the town by 8 p.m. Sunday, meaning all residents had to leave for the second time in as many days. Salvage work will start today, O'Brien said.
By 12:30 p.m. Sunday, about 60 residents and friends had gathered at a crossroads a few blocks east of town, waiting to return to their shattered homes. The crowd had more than doubled before the first were allowed to enter shortly after 2 p.m.
Meanwhile, a constant parade of cars crawled past the State Patrol checkpoint.
In and outside of town, stories of near-death experiences emerged with afternoon sunshine:
* Beth and John Isakson, owners of 24 Arabian horses, said they fled to their basement as the tornado approached and the pressure on their ears became unbearable.
"It sounded like a train was going over the top of us," she said. "It was really, really loud."
Bricks shook loose from the walls. They were showered in dust. When it was all over they went upstairs to find the tornado shattered their windows and sucked out many of their possessions.
It destroyed the barn and pen the horses were in. Flying wreckage gashed their hides, and others were trapped by falling trees and had to be freed with a chain saw.
"They had a tough night," Beth Isakson said. The good news: The cuts appeared relatively minor.
One horse appeared to have a broken leg, meaning it may be euthanized.
* Bob Fahrnbruch was upstairs in his house when he heard the hail stop and the wind suddenly become quieter.
"This is it," he said as he joined nine others in the basement. The tornado hit within minutes.
Family members and neighbors were crouched and crying beneath a pingpong table. Some were praying. His son kept repeating that they were going to die.
He could hear the wind rushing through the false ceiling in the basement and thought it odd there was wind in the house, not realizing that his upper floors were already gone.
A few minutes later, he looked next door to the house in which 73-year-old Elaine Focken died, noting that it appeared to have caved in upon itself.
Focken died after being struck by debris, according to Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner.
"This is all replaceable," Fahrnbruch said of his $105,000 ranch home. "But it still feels like a nightmare. I know I'm not, but I feel like I'm going to wake up."
* Along an east-west road about three miles south of Hallam, Pat Christian said she and son Kendal cowered in a red Chevette with its glass smashed out after the tornado ripped their log house from its foundation and tossed a pickup truck into a lagoon.
They tore carpeting off the car's floor to protect their heads from a secondary hailstorm and waited until 1:30 a.m. for floodwaters to recede from a gravel road so rescue personnel could reach them.
Yes, said Pat Christian, she has insurance — "and an almighty God."
* Less than a mile to the west, Gail Easton, sister Becky Simpson and Simpson's daughter, Stephani Rust, huddled in a bathtub as the tornado lifted Easton's house from its foundation and then blew it apart.
Before the house went, "the wind pounded the walls and the walls vibrated like the back side of a drum," Rust said.
Friend Jim McKay ducked down between a washing machine and a dryer. "And when it got finished," Easton said, "he was standing in the washer."
"We insulated each other and buffered for each other," Rust said. "All three of us needed to be in that tub and all three of us reached that tub just in time."
When the tornado's roar moved away, the three shoeless women and McKay retreated westward into the darkness with a single flashlight, pelted by hailstones, stepping over power lines and wading through water to get to a house that had not been destroyed.
"We were guided by lightning," said Easton.
"The mile-and-a-half walk, I think, was more of an adventure than standing in the tub," Simpson said.
* A bit farther west, 85-year-old Hazel Hartsook was home alone because her daughter and son-in-law, Jean and Richard Schnieder, had gone to Wichita, Kan. Their daughter, who was supposed to stay overnight, had left for a dance recital in Crete.
When that house was destroyed, Hartsook sat in the rain until midnight waiting for help. Eventually, a rescue team from Pickrell found her.
She was in a Lincoln hospital Sunday.
* Derek Dragoo waited out the storm in the beer cooler of the Wild Goose Saloon at 303 Main St.
Roughly 10 people piled into the cooler's aisle.
As Dragoo, 36, pulled the cooler's door shut, the tornado smashed out the bar's windows, he said.
"It sounded like everything in the bar was being tossed around," said Dragoo, a member of Hallam's village board.
Dragoo said he'd seen other tornadoes, but nothing like the one that ravaged Hallam.
"It's definitely not going to be the same town."
Reach Art Hovey at (402) 523-4949 or ahovey@journalstar.com. Journal Star staff writers Andrew Nelson, Leah Thorsen, Don Walton and Mark Andersen contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2002-2008 Lincoln Journal Star. All rights reserved.