Winds tossed cars hundreds of yards

Twister path jagged, power up and down

Carrie Smith (left) of Judsonia hugs her friend Melissa Bradley near the remains of Bradley’s home Thursday on Cemetery Road in Vilonia. Bradley’s 13-year-old daughter and a 16-year-old baby sitter survived Sunday’s tornado huddling in a closet.
Carrie Smith (left) of Judsonia hugs her friend Melissa Bradley near the remains of Bradley’s home Thursday on Cemetery Road in Vilonia. Bradley’s 13-year-old daughter and a 16-year-old baby sitter survived Sunday’s tornado huddling in a closet.

VILONIA - Sunday’s tornado that killed 15 people in central Arkansas reached its maximum strength as it bore down on Vilonia, bending steel anchor bolts that held houses to their foundations and tossing cars hundreds of yards, a detailed National Weather Service survey of damage reveals.




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The storm was a “high end” EF4, with wind speeds nearing 200 mph, when it struck the Faulkner County town, weather service warning coordinator John Robinson of North Little Rock said. The storm also followed a path similar to the tornado that ripped through Vilonia on April 25, 2011, he said.

The Sunday twister formed 5.4 miles west of Ferndale in western Pulaski County at 7:06 p.m. as an EF0, with winds between 65 and 85 mph. It grew quickly, reaching wind speeds of up to 165 mph and killing three in that part of the county, before it weakened back to an EF0, the damage survey shows.

The tornado regained strength after crossing the Arkansas River, momentarily reaching an EF4 wind speed of 190 mph before dropping back to an EF0. By the time it reached Mayflower, though, the storm had grown. Winds speed reached 165 mph.

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Graphic of tornadoes in Arkansas

Robinson said it is not unusual for a tornado to change strength frequently, especially when one remains on the ground for a long time. That first tornado of Sunday traveled41.3 miles and stayed on the ground for about an hour.

The twister intensified, reaching the EF4 rating as it crossed the U.S. 64 bypass just southwest of Vilonia. It demolished the General Dollar store on Main Street, then headed for a subdivision northeast of the town. Eleven people died in Faulkner County.

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Kim Magnus leafs though a Bible found in the rubble of the Tittle home Thursday near Paron. Magnus and other members of the Bible Church spent the day organizing debris and salvaging keepsakes for the Tittles. Three members of the Tittle family died in Sunday’s tornado.

The tornado’s trek ended in White County northeast of El Paso, where one person died.

Weather service survey teams also plotted the tracks of four other tornadoes that struck the state Sunday evening. In all, the storm system damaged more than 3,000 homes and toppled scores of trees and utility poles.

In Mayflower, Mayor Randy Holland said his main goal Thursday was getting Arkansas 365 open to all traffic.

The tornado knocked three large power-transmission lines across the highway on the east side of town. Since then, cars have been traversing two-by-fours laid over the lines; larger trucks and buses have not been able to drive through the damaged area.

Entergy Arkansas crews and contracted utility teams worked to remove the lines Thursday afternoon.

“As soon as they get those up, 365 will be open, and I can take down all those barriers,” Holland said, referring to roadblocks manned by law enforcement officers from various agencies, including the U.S. Postal Service.

The mayor said most of his city’s residents now have water and electricity. The town, where three people died in the storm, remained under a 7 p.m. curfew, however, he said.

“Right now, until we get it totally safe at night, we’ve just got to continue that,” he said of the curfew.

The city hoped to return service to its streetlights Thursday evening, and crews will work through the next several days to get power back on in damaged areas.

“This town is the strongest I’ve ever seen in my life,” Holland said “We’ve been through a tornado three years ago, the oil spill and now this. We may get knocked down, but you’re not going to keep us down.”

Traffic on Interstate 40 through Mayflower was backed up again as motorists slowed down to view damage along the roadway.At 1:30 p.m., vehicles were lined up for 6 miles, state Highway and Transportation Department spokesman Jeff Whatley said.

Earlier in the week, the Highway Department placed message boards advising travelers that the minimum speed limit there was 45 mph.

“We just had to stress to people that the interstate is open,” Arkansas State Police spokesman Bill Sadler said. If motorists impede traffic by slowing to take photographs, they will be ticketed, Sadler said. He was unsure whether anyone had yet been ticketed in the area.

“The troopers are certainly making their presence known in the area by patrolling there,” he said.

Also Thursday, Game and Fish Commission employees continued removing debris from Lake Conway. Crews picked up 240 tons of debris from the lake the day before, commission spokesman Keith Stephens said.

“The rubble has mainly consisted of residential building material,” he said. “So far, we have found typical household cleaners but nothing in any amount that should cause a problem to the fishery. We’ve also found pieces of furniture, kids toys and pictures.”

Officials with the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality were investigating to determine the tornado’s effect on the environment, spokesman Katherine Benenati said.

She said the storm would not affect “ongoing remediation” from the oil spill last year near Lake Conway. Exxon Mobil’s Pegasus pipeline ruptured on March 29, 2013, spilling tens of thousands of gallons of heavy crude oil into Mayflower’s Northwood subdivision, drainage ditches and a cove of the lake on the opposite side of I-40 from the main body of water.

Exxon Mobil spokesman Aaron Stryk said contractors for the oil company have continued to monitor for any oil sheen and take water samples since Sunday’s storm.

Faulkner County Attorney David Hogue, who is serving as the county’s spokesman, said Entergy expects all serviceable houses to have electricity restored today. As of Thursday night, he said, 1,500 houses were without power, compared with 12,000 shortly after the tornado.

Hogue spoke Thursday in the parking lot of what used to be a small shopping center along U.S. 64, which runs through downtown Vilonia. The center was so devastated that the only clue as to any of the businesses there just days ago was a partly obscured blue and white sign with yellow letters reading “Daylight Donuts.”

Dark gray smoke billowed over Vilonia, visible for miles, as workers burned debris.

On Main Street, volunteers used chain saws to cut large trees and stacked the pieces alongside separated piles of trash, large branches and construction waste. Farther back into the community, along North Street, Cemetery Road and other streets, workers anxiously circled small fires burning yard debris and paper.

Hogue said state environmental officials emailed the county to advise that outdoor fires could lead to harmful chemical emissions. The fires also could spread on windy days, he said.

He said many residents don’t have television access and don’t know they are not supposed to burn debris.

“It’s hard to get the word out to people who don’t have anything,” he said.

In the more densely populated Parkwood Meadows subdivision, no fires were set. Volunteers worked to separate piles of debris and placed them as close to the curbs as possible for pickup.

After compiling the storm survey’s results, Robinson of the weather service said he noticed that the tornado that hit Mayflower and Vilonia took several “jogs” and veered momentarily off its general northeasterly path, just as the 2011 tornado did.

“In 2011, it took dozens of jogs,” he said. “We saw that again this time. Sometimes, it was possibly because of terrain. Sometimes, we just don’t know. The flattest place it went [Sunday] was the Arkansas River, and it jogged while crossing it.”

Robinson said the 41-mile track it took Sunday was typical of an EF3 or EF4 tornado.

Meteorologists first debated whether a second track farther northeast of El Paso was caused by the same tornado. However, because there was a gap of more than 2 miles between damage paths, Robinson said, it was determined that a second tornado formed.

That tornado touched down near Center Hill west of Searcy at 8:13 p.m. south of Moonshine Road. It destroyed a mobile home and damaged other homes before ending near Smith Road.

Vera Boyce said she and her husband, Billy Boyce, heard the storm nearing her home on Tanner Road northwest of Searcy about 8:15 p.m. Sunday. She knew about the destruction in Mayflower and Vilonia, and a television station said the storm was heading her way.

“We knew it was bad there. We were getting prepared,” she said. “We knew it would be here in a few minutes.”

Three years ago, she stood on her porch and watched as the tornado that struck Vilonia then approached her home.

“It was horrible,” she said of the April 2011 tornado. “It was a black, dirty cloud twirling around.”

That twister missed her home.

On Sunday, she and her husband pulled a mattress into a hallway of their home, crawled under it and waited.

“The power went out, and we were in the dark,” she said. “We heard things hitting the house. It was scary for a little bit. We did a whole lot of praying.”

Sunday’s storm tore siding off the Boyces’ home and knocked a large limb into it, but it wasn’t damaged badly.

A third tornado ripped through a mostly wooded area near Steprock in White County at 8:35 p.m. The fourth twister followed Morris Drive f ive miles northwest of Velvet Ridge in White County before weakening on Scoggins Road.

The fifth twister touched down for less than a mile east of Pleasant Plains.

Robinson said that because areas where some of the storms hit were so rural, two meteorologists helped spot damage in a Civil Air Patrol plane.

Despite plotting tornadoes for decades, Robinson said he was surprised by the storm’s fury. He said he saw cars strewn hundreds of yards away in Mayflower and Vilonia, and steel bolts that builders use to anchor wood-framed houses to foundations were bent over from the wind’s force.

He said also saw a 58,000-pound intermodal shipping container atop the roof of the unfinished new Vilonia intermediate school, which sustained heavy damage. The container was flipped upside down.

“It didn’t roll there,” he said. “It was picked up and put on the roof.”

Information for this article was contributed by Chad Day and Claudia Lauer of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/02/2014

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