Lessons endure from doomful day of tornadoes 30 years ago

Today, the 30th anniversary of the pounding tornadoes that walloped the Mahoning and Shenango valleys, conjures up a wide swath of eerie images and powerful emotions.

It’s a day to remember the surrealist horrors of our battered landscape and to recall those whose lives were snuffed out or inexorably changed. But it is also a day to recognize the resilience of our twister-battered communities, to reflect on the advances in technology and preparedness that minimize a replay of those storms’ devastation and a day to reinforce the lessons that thousands should have learned that last fateful day of May 1985.

To be sure, no other weather event or act of God in the ensuing three decades has even come close to matching the fury, the intensity and the destruction of the 1985 tornadoes. For that, we can consider ourselves blessed.

As stories on Page A1 today by Vindicator staff writers Peter Milliken and Ed Runyan remind us, 30 years ago today, Newton Falls was the entry point of a string of tornadoes that swept through parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Ontario, Canada.

The cold hard numbers are chilling indeed: At least 88 people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured by about 40 funnel clouds during an eight-hour period.

One of the first and the largest of those reached internal speeds of 300 mph, high enough to turn homes into splinters and to suck the life out of people who stood in harm’s way.

Nineteen of those deaths and about 500 of those injuries occurred in Trumbull and Mercer counties. The twisters also caused more than $140 million in property damage in our region alone.

As today’s special report illustrates, the monstrous storms of three decades ago today remain firmly embedded in the minds of many who lived through them.

Many of their stories are heart-warming and remind us of the genuine human capacity to rise above adversity to help fellow men and women caught in the cross-hairs of unmitigated mayhem.

In Hubbard, for example, the faith-based community mobilized quickly to help those in dire need. With other local churches supporting its effort, the Hubbard Church of the Nazarene’s lawn became the central feeding station for displaced residents and tornado cleanup crews. There, some 8,000 meals were served in the days after the tornado struck.

Their limited resources were more than compensated by their unlimited commitment to guide their community to recovery.

In Niles, William Carney, then a Youngstown fire captain, recalled the insidious horrors and the inspiring esprit de corps of scores of city residents. At the site of Niles Park Plaza, one of the most severely hit targets, man’s humanity toward man was on display front and center.

“It was just piles of bricks. That’s all it was,” Carney said of the area where the plaza was flattened. “It was just a mess. ”

But that didn’t stop scores of police, firefighters and neighborhood residents from all walks of life from risking life and limb to use their bare hands to sift through the twisted rubble in a frantic scramble to extricate survivors. Such acts of collective courage played out throughout the district.

Individual acts of gallantry abounded as well. Take David Kostka, 36, of Farrell, who threw his body over his 7-year-old niece and a 10-year-old boy in a ditch near a Wheatland Little League field, protecting them from severe injury before being pulled to his own death.

AMAZING RECOVERY

All illustrate that everyday people – in an instant – can and do commit acts of great heroism and unbounded selflessness. Those traits continued in the weeks and months after the storms and played a leading role in the amazing healing and recovery of lives and landscapes.

Collectively, the hardest hit-communities of Niles, Newton Falls, Hubbard and Wheatland, Pa., learned that the passion to help extends far beyond our boundaries. Assistance from Red Cross affiliates, Mennonite, community groups and individuals throughout the nation responded speedily and efficiently. Valley residents would do well to remember that blessing and reach out to assist others standing in the epicenter of disaster, such as the deadly flooding in recent days in Texas and Oklahoma.

The stark horror also produced other lessons. Many for whom tornadoes lived only in the merry old land of Oz received a fast and furious reality check. The storms and their aftermath ignited a new urgency toward understanding the fundamentals of tornado safety. It mobilized communities and counties to raise the level of tornado preparedness.

Additionally, improvements in weather and other technology have led to earlier and more detailed warnings – in 1985 some communities had little or no advance notice.

But just because we have been spared the destructive wrath of May 31, 1985, for three decades now does not mean any of us should ever let down our guard.

And just because the passage of time has clouded or erased some of the horrific memories does not mean that the lessons of that destructive and doomful day in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys should ever be forgotten.