Loadstar 248/248.d81/t.diskovery

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          D I S K O V E R Y
           by Dave Moorman


      Wednesday, March 28, 2007

    Rosa Rosales was visiting her
mother-in-law next door when they
heard a roaring wind -- a sound like a
freight train but without the whistle.
She took her daughter and hurried
home. They didn't make it.

    Rosa was tossed into a tree as the
Holly Tornado slammed into this little
community of 1000. Her daughter was
thrown against the tree at its base.
Rosa's body was broken; she soon died
from her injuries. Her daughter
suffered deep bruises.

    The tornado, moving at over 60
miles an hour, with 130 mile-an-hour
winds flung her mobile home high in
the air, dropping it on the house of
Bruce and Cheryl Roup. Fortunately,
the Roups were 10 miles away in
Granada, enjoying a Mexican dinner
with their daughter and grandchildren.

    The mobile home bounced, then
smashed into Eulamae Hart's house.
Eulamae lives at the Holly Nursing
Care Center, so she also avoided
injury. The tornado continued north,
moving along Holly's Gateway Park, a
four-block long greenway that once was
the channel of Horse Creek. It jogged
to the east a block and traveled up
Highland Drive.

    I was in Bristol, fifteen miles
away at the time, conducting a Bible
Study at our church there. Linda
Lonnberg, an EMT, had her ambulance
radio with her. We heard about
sightings of a tornado, but the
reports were garbled and confused.

    I did not know that my wife Sheri,
who stayed home that evening with a
sore back, was dozing in front of the
television at our house on Highland
Drive. She awoke to the roar. The
windows suddenly blew in, and she
made her way -- amid flying schrapnel
in the pitch black house -- to the
basement. Then it was over. Silence.

    Sandy Nordyke, who was helping
conduct the Bible study, got a call
from her father-in-law. The tornado
had clipped his house (a block west of
Highland) then moved north. Sandy's
husband and kids were alright, hiding
in a central closet. But their house
was gone.

    Then Linda's radio crackled to
life again. An ambulance was needed on
Highland Drive. Sandy and I jumped
into our cars and drove through hail
to get to our homes. But at Granada,
we were stopped. The highway was
closed, except for emergency vehicles.
I waited at the convenience store
while Sandy went to stay with
friends. While waiting at the store, I
got word that Sheri was OK.

    Two hours later, the road was
opened and I arrived at a dark and
forboding town. Our street looked like
a war zone, and our house was badly
battered. Inside, I found Sheri's
purse and our cell phone. I checked
the voice mail, and discovered that
Sheri was at a neighbor's house a
couple blocks away.

    All in all, 143 buildings were
damaged, 40 were destroyed. Two people
died -- Rosa Rosales and Dolores
Burns. The next morning, people were
gathering at six a.m. with chain saws,
front-loaders, farm trucks, and
flatbed trailers. Windows were
boarded. Roofs were patched. Furniture
and clothing were loaded into vans and
hauled to safe places.

    Remarkably, porta-potties were
delivered by nine a.m. -- just 13
hours after the devastation. And
television news trucks with satellite
dishes were soon parked along the
street. But mostly, people were
working. Piling up debris. Gathering
whatever keepsakes could be found. And
telling their stories to each other.

    Sheri and I surveyed the damage.
All the windows were blown in, save
one. That window was the one by
Sheri's head as she watched TV. Across
the street, when the roar came by, a
young mother put her children on the
floor of their hallway, wishing and
praying for something to cover their
backs. Just then, a mattress blew in
and landed on them. They called it
their "Jesus Mattress!"

    Just ten yards south of our house,
the twister's path turned from due
north to northeast, ripping through
three houses and obliterating the home
of the grade school principal. He had
been at the school. His wife was
coming back from Denver. And their
daughter was at youth group at a
church outside of town.

    The miracles go on for ever! So
did the damage. Many houses had their
roofs lifted, destroying the integrity
of the house. By Saturday, unsafe
buildings were demolished. On our
street, out of 14 homes, our house and
one other remained. Our church was not
in the direct path, but suffered
damage as well. It had a metal roof
suspended over the old roofs.
Evidently, the large pocket of air had
to come out -- and the metal roof was
carried across the street.

    We were fortunate. The Baptist
church is now faced with the decision
to refurbish their badly buckled
walls, or rebuild completely. The
insurance -- after 80 years of
depreciation -- isn't helping much.

    Sheri and I loaded a semi-trailer
with our stuff (which took several
weeks to accomplish) and parked it at
a parishioner's farm. A fellow pastor
loaned us a fifth-wheel to live in
while the house is rebuilt. We were
thinking of taking a vacation, and
someone in the congregation asked,
"Are you taking the fifth-wheel?"

    "No," I replied. "We're staying in
motel rooms. Separate rooms!"

    We witnessed a lot of miracles. It
seems that God has a lot of "wiggle"
room in the tremendous chaos of a
storm. Hundreds of people were in the
right place at just the right time.
Another miracle was how the community
came out, especially during the first
several days, to get the debris
cleaned up. And we had a lot of help
from Disaster Response groups. FEMA
was here -- more or less. The Red
Cross and other organizations helped
in dozens of ways.

    But it was the Salvation Army that
came and stayed, serving three hot
meals a day at the Community Center
for 46 days. The Center became a place
for people to gather, to sit together,
to eat and visit and laugh and share
in the grief of losing so much in just
a minute or two. The tornado brought
us closer together as a community.
Some have suggested we call it "Peace
Maker."

    I salvaged my computers and all my
LOADSTAR stuff -- except my favorite
machine was damaged and will not run
VICE. So I had to buy a new laptop, on
which I am now typing this. Also, in
the rush to get our stuff out of the
house, my C-64 stuff was scattered in
many boxes -- which is why this issue
took so long to get out to you.

    But "We're Holly! We're OK!" We
will work through this devastation and
build a new world -- in some ways a
better world. And we thank all of you
for your thoughts and prayers and
gifts. All will be well.

 DMM