MAY 31, 1985 | Vivid tornado memories persist 30 years later

RELATED: Technology improves forecasting, warnings

By PETER H. MILLIKEN and ED RUNYAN

news@vindy.com

HUBBARD

Thirty years ago today, a tornado ripped through Newton Falls, Niles, Hubbard and Wheatland. Pa., killing 19 people in Trumbull and Mercer counties and injuring more than 500.

The F-5 tornado killed nine people in Niles, one each in Lordstown, Hubbard and Masury and seven in Wheatland, along its 47-mile path of destruction.

Property damage was estimated at $140 million.

NILES PARK PLAZA

William Carney, then a Youngstown fire captain, recalled his trip from Fire Station One in downtown Youngstown to the ruins of Niles Park Plaza aboard Youngstown’s Ladder 22 to provide mutual aid as dozens of police, firefighters and local residents frantically sorted through the rubble by hand in search of survivors or victims.

“It was just piles of bricks [and roof remnants]. That’s all it was,” he said of the area where the plaza was flattened.

“It was just a mess. That’s all. It was just piles of stuff with steel sticking out of it,” said Carney, who retired from the fire department in 1996.

“They were throwing bricks, trying to look for people,” he said of the searchers, who were overwhelmed by the task before them.

“There was nothing there to dig with. All they had was their hands,” he recalled. “Everybody jumped in” to help. “It was horrible,” he said of the destruction.

Heavy equipment for moving the debris had not yet arrived, and the early evening tornado had caused a widespread power failure.

The Youngstown ladder truck’s job was to provide generator-powered aerial lighting to enable the search to continue through the night.

The intersection of U.S. Route 422 and Vienna Road, where the plaza and the former Top of the Strip roller rink were located, was the site of seven of Trumbull County’s 12 tornado fatalities.

The retail plaza was rebuilt after the tornado.

NEWTON FALLS HIGH

Bob Pavlik had just come from the rehearsal for his graduation at Newton Falls High School and was at home preparing to attend graduation open houses.

“My aunt called and said, ‘There’s a tornado. Get in the basement.’ I have two brothers. We ran outside and saw the funnel,” Pavlik said.

“It wasn’t something we were afraid of, more in awe of,” he said of the sight from his Washington Street home on the edge of town.

The tornado did not damage his home, but the downtown Newton Falls he knew so well was incredibly different by the time he and his brothers drove a mile or so to see it.

“We were told there was nothing left of downtown, so the first thing we did was get in the car, went uptown and saw the total devastation. ... I remember people saying, ‘People are trapped.’ It was like a real-life movie. It’s always amazed me nobody died.

“I remember the sadness of how much destruction there was and the sadness that our school was gone, our gymnasium we were just in was half gone.”

Pavlik found it scary to think of how many people would have lost their lives if his senior class had chosen May 31 as the date for its graduation ceremony.

“One of the dates we could have chosen was May 31, and it would have been at the time of the tornado,” he said. “The whole town would have been in the gym. Thank the good lord we chose a different date.”

No one died in Newton Falls in part because storm spotter Clayton Reakes sounded a siren after spotting the storm from the roof of city hall, which is close to the high school, its gym and the middle school.

The gym and middle school would be damaged beyond repair, but the high school still stands. Today, Pavlik works there as chief financial officer for the Cadle Co., a collection and loan-servicing company that bought the building in 1987.

SURVIVOR’S ACCOUNT

Joyce Dripps had just moved into her home on Collar-Price Road in the Coalburg section of Hubbard Township, with her husband, Denny, two weeks earlier. On May 31, 1985, Dripps was being visited by a cousin and her two young children.

With her husband away at work, Dripps and her guests had just finished dinner on the back porch when the rain began and they entered the house.

“The curtains were standing straight out,” as the wind blew them into the house, Dripps recalled.

Then, she heard a loud roar. “It sounded like massive planes overhead,” she said.

“By the time we realized what was happening and headed for the basement, we heard a window break,” due to its being hit by a falling tree, she said.

By the time she was able to coax the family dog into the basement, the tornado had already passed, Dripps said. Neither Dripps, nor any of her guests were injured.

“The garage was picked up and moved off the foundation,” and had to be demolished and replaced, but the two cars inside it were undamaged, she reported.

A picnic table purchased the night before and placed on the porch disappeared and was never found.

The roof, windows and siding and an electric box on the Dripps residence had to be replaced.

The tornado felled about 30 trees on their property.

Dripps said she was “very touched” by the generosity of volunteers with chain saws who helped clear the fallen trees from their property.

HUBBARD CHURCHES

The massive tornado demolished the parsonage at Coalburg United Methodist Church and forced its pastor, the Rev. Jim Humphrey, to reside in an on-site camping trailer until a new parsonage could be built.

The twister then swept eastward toward a cluster of churches, the Hubbard Church of the Nazarene and Cornerhouse Christian Church, which were unscathed, and the Chestnut Ridge Church of God, which was struck by airborne debris, but suffered relatively minor damage.

The twister heavily damaged or destroyed many homes in the nearby Kermont Heights residential neighborhood, to which the Ohio National Guard restricted access during the post-tornado cleanup.

Hubbard Township officials imposed a 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew during the cleanup that preceded the rebuilding of that neighborhood.

The spot where Evan Evans, 69, of Hubbard-Thomas Road, died in his tornado-stricken residence remains marked with a memorial plaque on a nearby utility pole that is topped by a tornado siren.

The twister also mowed down a canopy of trees that had formed a near-tunnel over Chestnut Ridge Road.

FE3EDING STATION

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 first eight days after the tornado struck.

Joy Vass, a parishioner at the Nazarene church, recalled that the church had no electricity and its own food service capacity was limited to a refrigerator and a stove.

A local businessman, Bill Helmbrecht, owner of Metalcrafts Inc., supplied a generator that enabled the church to operate its feeding station, with the help of members of that church and other churches, who brought in food, Vass recalled.

Local grocers donated food to the effort, Vass recalled.

Volunteers took food and drinks to people in the nearby tornado-stricken residential neighborhood, first on foot using hand-carried baskets, and then via wagons, and eventually, golf carts, recalled Jeff Burns, a Nazarene member.

For its efforts, the Nazarene church received commendation letters from then-Gov. Richard F. Celeste and then-U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr.

Mennonites, who camped at the Chestnut Ridge Park & Campground, helped rebuild Kermont Heights, Vass recalled.

“They all wear the straw hats. It looked like amber waves of grain,” as the Mennonites walked together to the area being rebuilt, she observed.

PASTOR REMINISCES

The Rev. Rob McFarland, pastor of the Chestnut Ridge Church of God since November 1982, recalled that he and some of his parishioners returned to that church after having learned of the tornado while attending a church-sponsored softball game at Harding Park.

“Kermont Heights just looked like a war zone,” when he returned to the tornado-stricken area after the unfinished game, he recalled. “We did lose a lot of trees on the back part of our property,” he said of the church grounds.

“It was amazing to me that houses were totally blown away,” said Sylvia Rakyta of Hubbard, a Church of God member.

Pastor McFarland and members of his church sprung into action in support of the Nazarene church’s feeding center and participated in a house-to-house damage and needs-assessment survey of Kermont Heights residents.

“The Nazarene Church was the focal point for everything,” Pastor McFarland said. “We had a local Christian group in town called Hubbard Christians in Action, and a lot of the emergency disaster relief work came through them,” he said.

“I thought we had a pretty resilient spirit in the community,” he said.

Pastor McFarland said he vividly recalls the incessant buzz of chainsaws from early morning to late evening during the tornado cleanup.

“We had a hole blown in the peak of our sanctuary,” Pastor McFarland said. A piece of someone’s porch roof also slammed into the church, he said.

That and most of the other damage to the Church of God was repaired, but, to this day, a careful examination of the sanctuary’s exterior reveals lingering dings and dents in its west wall siding and a slight eastward twist and tilt of its cross-topped steeple.

“The tornado pretty much came up Chestnut Ridge Road. If you lived on the north side of the road, your property would be destroyed. If you lived on the south side of the road, it was like the petals off your flowers weren’t even affected. There was such a sharp line of demarcation there,” he recalled.

“As it approached the churches, I don’t know if it’s divine intervention — that’s what I think — but it seemed like it veered north, and went around all three of our churches,” he said.

CEREMONY ABANDONED

Marti Nicastro, of Hermitage, Pa., recalled the lights went out while she was attending a friend’s graduation from the Sharon General Hospital nursing school at St. Patrick’s Church in Sharon.

Then, hail “that sounded like elephants running on the tin roof” pounded the church, she said.

The master of ceremonies shouted to the audience that all physicians and nurses were to report immediately to Sharon General Hospital, which would be receiving people injured by a tornado that hit Atlantic, Pa.

“The whole audience got up and left,” Nicastro recalled.

While leaving the ceremony, Nicastro learned that a tornado had hit Chestnut Ridge Road in Hubbard.

Nicastro and her friends then went to Hubbard, where she took photos of the fresh tornado damage with the camera she had brought to the graduation ceremony.

“It was so hard to believe what we were seeing,” said Nicastro, a lifelong member of Cornerhouse Christian Church, who now owns Marti’s Memories Photography in Hermitage.

“There was a definite path,” Nicastro said. “In one look, there wasn’t a leaf off of a tree, and yet, a foot away, a house was completely ruined,” she observed.

“It was a sickening feeling,” she said.

There were no cellular phones, so there was no way to contact people from a car to check on their well-being, Nicastro said.

“We were driving around in panic, trying to find people to make sure they were OK,” she explained.