The Roanoke Times: Coverage of the Glade Spring tornado (April 29, 2011)

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A scary night by any standards

Associated Press

PLEASANT GROVE, Ala. — Firefi ghters searched one splintered pile after another for survivors Thursday, comb-ing the remains of houses and neighborhoods pulverized by the nation’s deadliest tor-nado outbreak in almost four decades. At least 290 people were killed across six states — more than two-thirds of them in Alabama, where large cities bore the half-mile-wide scars the twisters left behind.

The death toll from Wednesday’s storms seems out of a bygone era, before Doppler radar and pinpoint satellite forecasts were around to warn communities of severe weather. Residents

were told the tornadoes were coming up to 24 minutes ahead of time, but they were just too wide, too powerful and too locked onto populat-ed areas to avoid a horrifying body count.

“These were the most intense super cell thunder-storms that I think anybody who was out there forecast-ing has ever seen,” said mete-orologist Greg Carbin at the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.

“If you experienced a direct hit from one of these, you’d have to be in a rein-forced room, storm shelter or underground” to survive,

A trail of devastation

KYLE GREEN | The Roanoke Times

Walter Hayden looks over the devastation outside his house in Glade Spring in Washington County. He said he was hurt during the storm and spent time in a hospital. “It sounded just like a freight train popping off,” he said. Meteorologists said the storm brought winds of 140 mph.

See TORNADO, 8

ROANOKE, VIRGINIA 75¢

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FRIDAY APRIL 29, 2011

n IN VIRGINIA: Four deaths are blamed on a twister that tore into Washington County.

n TOLL LIKELY TO RISE: In Alabama and other states,at least 290 people died.

n FUELING THE STORMS: Many factors made this one of the deadliest U.S. outbreaks.

TORNADOES STUN THE SOUTH

By Shawna Morrison [email protected]

381-1665

GLADE SPRING — A tor-nado that lay waste to 11 square miles of Washington County early Thursday was the dead-liest in the state in nearly two decades. Four deaths were blamed on the storm, and dam-age was estimated to be in the millions of dollars.

“It’s something you wouldn’t believe would happen in Virgin-ia, in Glade Spring,” said Scott Sutphin, whose gas station and truck stop in the far Southwest Virginia community was at the epicenter of the devastation.

Petro Truck Stop’s windows had been blown out from both sides and the diesel and gasoline pumps were blown over, but 12 hours after the tornado hit, the station was open and busy with law enforcement offi cers and emergency crews.

The station, at Exit 29 off Interstate 81, was surrounded by the worst damage in South-west Virginia caused by the storm system that killed nearly 300 across the South. The four deaths tie the Glade Spring tornado with a 1993 Petersburg tornado as Virginia’s deadliest since 11 were killed in a 1959 twister in Albemarle County.

Though most of the sur-rounding area had no power, the station was running on a generator. Crews were already working to repair the damage, though Sutphin said he wasn’t sure how long the store could remain open.

A Dollar General, a Pizza Plus and a Wendy’s restaurant were among other businesses that sustained extensive damage.

“This is probably the worst-

That eerie, pit-of-my-stom-ach “this is tornado weather” feeling — it’s gripped me before.

Supercell storms lined up on radar like beads on a chain, each adorned with its own red tornado warning box — I’ve seen that before.

In Arkansas. In Kan-sas. In South Dakota. Not in Southwest Virginia.

It was the fi rst night that felt quite like this in my dozen

years in the Roanoke Valley, with the zooming, ragged

clouds and random, fl ut-tering lightning, as wind gusts stirred the uneasy, humid night.

For many lifelong Southwest Virginians, the wall-to-wall tor-nado warnings in the wee hours of Thursday morning were something entirely new, or at least

that’s what I’ve been told by some of you.

But what you experienced would have been unnerving even for a tornado-tested resi-dent of the Plains states. For a while late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, every thunderstorm moving out of Tennessee across the western tier of Virginia was rotating, some very rapidly, spun by low-level winds out of the south and southeast under-cutting higher-level winds out

n Explore photo galleries from Glade Spring and across the South. n Join the conversation on Kevin Myatt’s Weather Journal blog n See a video from the morning after the tornado n Follow our ongoing updates.

Across South, people pick up the pieces

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An apartment complex near Monroe Road in Glade Spring was among the many buildings destroyed in Thursday’s storm. Many houses were blown off their foundations, with others sustaining signifi cant damage. At least one small church was reported destroyed.

Associated Press

Glenda Henagar (left) hugs her mother, Norma Carpenter, on Thursday. Carpenter and her husband received minor injuries after a tornado struck their home in Catoosa County, Ga.

Weather Journal

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THE ROANOKE TIMES 7Friday, April 29, 2011

Carbin said. The storms seemed to

hug the interstate highways as they barreled along like runaway trucks, obliterating neighborhoods or even entire towns from Tuscaloosa, Ala., to Bristol, Va. One family rode out the disaster in the basement of a funeral home, another by huddling in a tan-ning bed.

In Concord, a small town outside Birmingham that was ravaged by a tornado, Randy Guyton’s family got a phone call from a friend warning them to take cover. They rushed to the basement garage, piled into a Honda Ridgeline and listened to the roar as the twister devoured the house in seconds. After-ward, they could see outside through the shards of their home and scrambled out.

“The whole house caved in on top of that car,” he said. “Other than my boy screaming to the Lord to save us, being in that car is what saved us.”

At least three people died in a Pleasant Grove subdivi-sion southwest of Birming-ham, where residents trickled back Thursday to survey the damage.

Greg Harrison’s neigh-borhood was somehow unscathed, but he remains haunted by the wind, thunder and lightning as they built to a crescendo, then suddenly stopped.

“Sick is what I feel,” he said. “This is what you see in Okla-homa and Kansas. Not here.

Not in the South.” Alabama Gov. Robert

Bentley said his state had confi rmed 204 deaths. There were 33 deaths in Missis-sippi, 33 in Tennessee, 14 in Georgia, fi ve in Virginia and one in Kentucky. Hundreds if not thousands of people were injured — nearly 800 in Tus-caloosa alone.

Some of the worst damage was about 50 miles southwest of Pleasant Grove in Tuscalo-osa, a city of more than 83,000 that is home to the Univer-sity of Alabama. The storms destroyed the city’s emer-gency management center, so the school’s Bryant-Denny Stadium was turned into a makeshift one. School offi -cials said two students were killed, though they did not say

how they died. Finals were canceled and commencement was postponed.

Tuscaloosa Mayor Wal-ter Maddox told reporters that police and the National Guard were to impose a cur-few at 10 p.m. Thursday, and 8 tonight . Authorities have been searching for survivors so far, but Maddox said they will begin using cadaver dogs today .

A tower-mounted news camera in Tuscaloosa cap-tured images of an astonish-ingly thick, powerful tornado fl inging debris as it leveled neighborhoods.

That twister and others Wednesday were several times more severe than a typical tornado, which is hun-dreds of yards wide, has winds

of about 100 mph and stays on the ground for a few miles, said research meteorologist Harold Brooks at the Storm Prediction Center.

“There’s a pretty good chance some of these were a mile wide, on the ground for tens of miles and had wind speeds over 200 mph,” he said.

Brooks said the tornado that struck Tuscaloosa could be an EF5 — the strongest cat-egory of tornado, with winds of more than 200 mph — and was at least the second-high-est category, an EF4.

The storm prediction cen-ter said it received 164 tornado reports around the region, but some tornadoes were prob-ably reported multiple times and it could take days to get a

fi nal count. In fact, Brooks said 50

to 60 reports — from the Mississippi-Alabama line, through Tuscaloosa and Bir-mingham and into Georgia and southwestern Tennessee — might end up being a single tornado. If that’s true its path would be one of the longest on record for a twister, rivaling a 1925 tornado that raged for 219 miles.

Brooks said the weather service was able to provide about 24 minutes notice before the twisters hit.

“It was a well-forecasted event,” Brooks said. “People were talking about this week

being a big week a week ago.” Bentley said forecasters did

a good job alerting people, but there’s only so much they can do to help people prepare.

Carbin, the meteorologist, noted the warning gave resi-dents enough time to hunker down, but not enough for them to safely leave the area.

“You’ve got half an hour to evacuate the north side of Tuscaloosa. How do you do that and when do you do that? Knowing there’s a tornado on the ground right now and the conditions in advance of it, you may inadvertently put people in harm’s way,” he said.

Photos by Associated Press

Jason McCraine sits in the remains of a business in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on Thursday, the day after a tornado ripped through the city. A meteorologist said the tornado that struck the city could be an EF5 — the strongest category, with winds of more than 200 mph — and was at least the second-highest category, an EF4.

Phillip Hartness carries his 3-year-old son, Shaun, as they look at a relative’s ruined home Thursday in Cleveland, Tenn. There were 33 deaths reported in the state.

By Jeff [email protected]

381-1661

Desi Sowers and her fam-ily hid in the basement of their Pulaski County home during Wednesday night’s storm, her attention affi xed to weather reports that governed their every move.

The Snowville family fi rst descended when storm cells boiled to threatening size on an online map.

Several hours later, when the radar cleared, they judged it safe enough to return upstairs and go to bed.

“Had it not been for my lit-tle iPad and the apps on there, we wouldn’t have known what was going on because we lost our satellite signal,” she said.

One thing worse than enduring a bad storm is being in the dark about how bad it truly is.

Because widespread power outages did not occur, many had good access to the Nation-al Weather Service alerts that fl ood TV, the Web or radio when hazardous weather

looms or strikes. But to stay informed, you

had to have both a working device and electricity. And, unless you had a high-tech weather radio or lived in one of the few communities with a siren, you had to stay up until it was over.

In another New River Valley home, Stuart Meese of Christiansburg stared at his smartphone and his wife focused on her laptop for much of the night.

“We defi nitely did not want to go to bed,” Meese said.

If you’re counting on a government warning siren to blare the alert when torna-does strike, including in the middle of the night while you are sleep, you’re going to be disappointed.

Most communities in Southwest Virginia do not have sirens and, in those that do, the storm may be so loud it drowns the warning out.

Offi cials said it’s up to people to stay informed.

“The big thing is pay-ing attention to the weather and knowing what a tornado watch means and what a tor-nado warning means,” said Bob Spieldenner , spokesman for the Virginia Department of Emergency Management.

James Day is the police chief and head of emergen-

cy services for the city of Bedford, which was struck by a tornado in 2002.

Bedford won a Depart-ment of Homeland Security grant with which it installed a siren near downtown in 2005. It wails an alternating tone for three minutes when there is a tornado warning and a steady tone for three more minutes when it’s all clear.

However, even in this

town, the chief urges resi-dents to have radios, because the siren is just one tool and imperfect.

“We beg people to pur-chase an emergency weather radio,” Day said. “They will give an in-house warning where you will be certain to hear it rather than trying to rely on the tornado siren.”

That and a safe, sturdy structure to hide in maximize

tornado protection, he said.The National Weather

Service reports on its web-site that the radios cost $50 to $200. They are tuned to con-tinuous weather broadcasts and can be programmed to remain silent but emit a warn-ing tone when a weather alert goes out for the community in which the user lives.

Alerted, the user can then listen to the report. With their backup batteries , they set the standard for emergency weather information.

On the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, six out-door sirens poised to alert the campus community were turned on in the overnight hours Wednesday.

Once the National Weath-er Service issued a tornado warning for Montgomery County, Virginia Tech police triggered a nine-minute siren blast at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, university spokesman Mark Owczarski said. The sirens went off again at 12:53 a.m. when the weather service issued a new tornado warn-ing for the county.

This is in keeping with emergency plans that call for triggering the sirens — which can emit a wail or a voice mes-sage — amid any emergency such as bad weather, Owczar-ski said.

But the sirens are not loud enough to penetrate build-ings.

And while the noise echoes off-campus, most non campus residents live too far to hear it even if they are outside.

As did many communities, Roanoke had civil defense sirens to warn residents of a nuclear attack during the Cold War, but those sirens no lon-ger operate, city emergency management coordinator Mike Guzo said.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, city offi cials explored the possibility of obtaining sirens to warn residents of terrorist attacks or severe weather, but it was decided they were too costly.

And, until recently, there hadn’t been a weather-based need.

“Prior to 2008, the pos-sibility of tornadoes in Roa-noke was laughable,” Guzo said. A weak tornado skipped through South Roanoke in June 2008.

If severe weather contin-ues, Guzo said he’ll talk with city leaders about obtaining sirens. He did not know how much they would cost, but said it would be expensive to cover all of Roanoke.

Staff writer Amanda Codispoti contributed to this report.

Keep abreast of weather alerts, officials say Few communities in the region have reliable warning systems for storms.

WEATHER SAFETY AT A GLANCEThe National Weather Service issues watches and warnings for such threats as thunderstorms, fl ash fl ooding and tornadoes. Tune in to local news media, weather websites or the radio for up-to-the-minute information.

TERMINOLOGY:

A watch: Conditions are favorable for hazardous weather to develop. Usually lasts fi ve to eight hours and covers a large geographic area of possibly several states. This is the time to prepare to take shelter.A warning: Hazardous weather is imminent or occurring. Usually lasts 45 to 60 minutes and covers an area of one to four counties. Upon the issuance of a warning, take shelter immediately.Suitable shelters: Basement of a house or an underground shelter are best, but any solid structure is a good choice. If no other alternative exists, choose a spot in the center of a building away from windows, such as a closet or a bathroom. Get under a mattress for cover. Avoid vehicles and highway underpasses.Emergency supplies: Basic recommended items include some food and water, medicine, an emergency radio and a fl ashlight with extra batteries.

FROM 1

SOUTH: Final count of storms may take daysPowerful tornadoes decimate the SouthThe death toll across the South is climbing following the devastating storms that passed through the region Wednesday.

AP

0 1 10 25 50 157Reported tornadoes, April 2011April 27 tornadoes

Miami

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Atlanta

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Oklahoma City

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8 THE ROANOKE TIMES FROM P

The storm system that hit Glade Spring blew over some tractor-trailers and tossed others at the Petro T

hit business in Glade Spring,” Sut-phin said.

He said at least six employees were at the truck stop when the storm came through . They hid in back rooms and showers until it passed.

The Washington County Sheriff ’s Offi ce said Thursday afternoon that it had concluded its fi rst round of search-and-rescue operations.

Four storm-related deaths were confi rmed in Washington County by 6:20 p.m., said Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Gel-lar. Their names were not released because their families were being notifi ed, she said.

The four deaths happened at separate locations in the Glade Spring area, Gellar said. Two were in separate homes, one in a local business and the fourth in a wreck on Interstate 81.

The crash was reported about 10:40 a.m. on I-81 north at mile marker 26, Gellar said. A car rear-ended a tractor-trailer stopped in front of it. The car’s driver was pro-nounced dead at a nearby hospital.

Parts of the highway had been obstructed by debris from the storm, and traffi c was moving and stopping. Northbound traffi c was reopened by noon.

Heavy damage

While the businesses at Exit 29 were hit hard, they certainly weren’t alone.

Numerous houses were blown off their foundations, with others sustaining signifi cant damage. The Glade Spring Middle School was also heavily damaged, Washington County Sheriff Fred Newman said.

Numerous tractor-trailers on I-81 and at the Petro Truck Stop were overturned and damaged . Several were strewn along the roadway, blocking traffi c on the interstate and parallel U.S. 11 for hours .

By late afternoon, meteorologists from the National Weather Service in Blacksburg had confi rmed a 2.8-mile-long tornado path in Smyth

County near Chilhowie. The path was up to a half-mile wide, and its intensity was rated EF-3, with maximum winds of 140 mph. Smyth County offi cials estimated $2 million to $2.5 million in damage, including fi ve unroofed houses and three overturned mobile homes.

‘A close-knit community’

Newman said that Washington County, along with help from state police, had implemented a curfew in the Glade Spring area from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Checkpoints were established to secure damaged homes and businesses, with only residents allowed in.

“This is a close-knit community, which has made our search-and-rescue efforts much easier,” New-man said.

“Neighbors here look out for one another and have been able to help us identify who was home at the time the storm struck. We truly appreciate the outpouring of sup-port from our residents and those in neighboring jurisdictions in this time of need.”

Whitney Manning and Annelise Shelton were in their town house on Old Monroe Road in Glade Spring when the storm system rolled in about 10:30 p.m.

After wind and hail started, the power went out, but the two women, who are seniors at Emory & Henry College, continued doing homework by fl ashlight.

Then the windows began to rattle and the house began to shake.

“So we got down into the laun-dry room,” Manning said. “The door was shaking and there was a lot of pressure, and the living room and kitchen windows just popped.”

“So we were like on the fl oor holding each other,” Shelton said.

When they fi nally tried to check the damage to their town house, they couldn’t get out and had to wait for friends to help them out a window. The second story of the town house was gone.

They went back to their house Thursday afternoon to see if they

could fi nd any of theielry or pictures. Thvided a place to stay care packages.

Outside a businesway, several emplotogether to begin rproperty.

“The whole bacbuilding is gone,” saigeneral manager ofshop.

He said employeto work, “and they’veget it all cleaned up back in business, geour customers.”

Kimble said somewere blown from thea mile away.

“I’m from Floridathrough four hurricnever seen anythingsaid.

Les Elswick, a Gredent, said by phone tenced quarter-sized hstorm, which causeddamage, but his concwas with a close fri

of the west and southwest. Any one of those storms

could have dropped a house-leveling tornado at any time. The warnings were warrant-ed, even if there have been no confi rmed reports of torna-does in or very near the New River or Roanoke valleys.

I’m quite certain there’s a patch of twisted trees some-where in the national forest land of Bland or Giles or Montgomery counties where a tornado touched down. A hunter or hiker will fi nd it someday and wonder what happened. Be thankful it didn’t land in Pearisburg or Blacksburg — or even Pulaski, again.

Unlike a snowstorm that buries everyone’s driveway, an ice storm that bends everyone’s trees or a hur-ricane that blows on every-one’s property for hundreds of miles, the cruel irony of a tornado outbreak is that it is absolutely devastating for a relative few in narrow paths, while it’s a thundery, breezy conversation starter for most everyone else.

While Glade Spring two hours down Interstate 81 dealt with wind-scattered destruction Thursday, most of Southwest Virginia expe-rienced a sunny spring day of fresh breezes and emerald leaves. Even the vast majority of Alabamans woke up with

fully intact houses Thursday morning — though hundreds of thousands have no power.

It was truly “tornado weather” in Southwest Virginia, but why? Why so often this year? Why has this become such a violent spring in the South and East?

We can start with La Nina. The streak of cooling sea surface temperatures in the central Pacifi c that is warm-ing fast now, likely to dis-solve entirely in a month or two, has been loosely linked to spring weather patterns increasing severe storms east of the Mississippi River.

But that one climatic fac-tor can’t be broad-brushed to explain this destructive spring, which now contains one of the deadliest tornado outbreaks in U.S. history.

The jet stream pattern since the cold weather broke in early February has favored a deeply southerly dipping jet stream over the West before turning northeastward. That upper-air fl ow has carried one low pressure system after another into the Ohio Valley or Great Lakes.

Being on the east side of that counterclockwise fl ow, we get a surge of sticky warmth from the Gulf of Mexico. Westerly winds high in the atmosphere bring drier air above that sultry air, and the low’s rotation sweeps in cooler, drier air that forms a solid boundary with the

warm, moist air. Lift along that boundary leads to tow-ering storms.

If the low tightens enough, we get winds switching from south to southeast at the sur-face, a vector of wind that creates spin as it blows into eastward or northeastward moving storms.

With so much warmth and humidity to feed on, the rotating storms moving out of Tennessee simply didn’t lose steam or start linking together into lines — less capable of rotation — as they marched across the Virginia state line. So they kept spin-ning well past most people’s bedtimes.

But, even though it messed up our sleep, we can be thank-ful that the storms did arrive that late, rather than at the day’s peak heating in the mid to late afternoon, when they would have been even more energetic.

Otherwise, fewer of us would have a place to sleep tonight.

Weather Journal runs on Monday, Wednesday and

Friday.

FROM 1

MYATT: Daytime storms may have been even stronger

Hope Cannon holds he on Thursday. The formthey’d come to the sta


Members of the Disaster Relief Feeding Unit, part of the Disaster Relief Virginia Baptist Mission Board, cook food for volunteers outside a truck stop in Glade Spring, Va.

For more weathertidbits, go tothe Weatherournal blog


Broken trees, damaged trucks and downed power lines fi ll U.S. 11 in Glade Spring on Thursday after a tornado tore through the town .

FROM 1

TORNADO: McDonnell t


Lisa Grimsley walks through the debris of Pizza Plus, the restaurant she and her family owned.

Associated Press

Megan Cleary walks through the remains of her house Thursday.

at blogs.roanoke.com/weatherjournal/.

FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2011 9PAGE 1

ERIC BRADY | The Roanoke Times

Truck Stop early Thursday. The station was the epicenter of the damage in Southwest Virginia. At least six employees were at the truck stop when the storm hit.

ir clothes, jew-he school pro-and gave them

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een Spring resi-that he experi-hail during the

d some vehicle cern Thursday iend who by 5

p.m. said her brother was still miss-ing. Thankfully, some 30 minutes later , the man had been located.

Junior Hamm, the pastor of Glade Spring’s Landmark Baptist Church, said that though the roof was in ruins, there was extensive water damage and columns had been destroyed, church service will take place Sunday morning — the fellowship hall was still intact.

When the tornado hit the area shortly after 1 a.m. , Hamm, his daughter and his wife took refuge in the basement. Media outlets kept them informed, which was impor-tant, since a storm of this type is far from the norm, Hamm said.

“It’s just one of those things you’re not accustomed to,” he said.

‘Nothing like this bad, ever’

Even those responding to the tragedy were shocked.

Walter Warren of the Saltville Rescue Squad said he was called out to the Glade Spring area at 1:50 a.m.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before, nothing like this bad,

ever,” Warren said.He pointed to several tractor-

trailers that had either been pushed over by high winds or picked up and tossed elsewhere.

One tractor-trailer was blown into the Iron Skillet, the restaurant inside the Petro Truck Stop .

President Barack Obama called Gov. Bob McDonnell to express his condolences over the loss of life and destruction in the state.

A total of fi ve people died in Vir-ginia storms, with another fatality in Halifax County on Wednesday eve-ning. Tornadoes were also reported in Augusta, Shenandoah, Goochland and Prince William counties.

Obama said that Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolita-no will work with the governor and state offi cials on federal assistance and recovery efforts.

McDonnell is scheduled to visit Washington County today to view the damage, a spokesman said . The governor has been coordinating the state’s disaster response and was getting continuous updates from state agencies, his offi ce said.

More help will come from else-where in Southwest Virginia.

Firefi ghters from Roanoke, Roa-noke County and Salem were called to help the rescue and clean up effort in Washington County.

The fi refi ghters, members of a regional rescue team, are trained to rescue people from collapsed build-ings, caves, trenches and confi ned spaces.

The team of 17 people was requested by the state and will depart this afternoon, according a statement from the Roanoke Fire-EMS Department.

The Washington County Sher-iff ’s Auxiliary has set up a shelter with food and lodging at the King Center on the Emory & Henry Col-lege campus. Those in need of a ride or more information can call 276-944-6835.

Staff writers Amanda Codispoti, Michael Sluss, Lerone Graham, Jorge Valencia and Kevin Myatt

contributed to this report.

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er 16-year-old daughter, Kourtne, at the Petro Truck Stop mer Roanoke resident is married to a a trucker and said ation to see if they could help.

to visit hard-hit area today

HOW YOU CAN HELP The Virginia Department of Emergency Management says the best way to help in a disaster like Thursday’s tornadoes is to make a cash donation to an organization participating in relief efforts. Some national and international organizations are providing relief efforts across the South: AMERICAN RED CROSS — U.S. mobile phone users can text REDCROSS to 90999 to add $10 automatically to your phone bill. Or visit www.redcross.org or call 1-800-733-2767 . CATHOLIC CHARITIES — The charity accepts disaster donations if you call 1-800-919-9338 or visit www.catholiccharitiesusa.org . SALVATION ARMY — The charity is providing food, drinks and spiritual support to victims. To donate, text GIVE to 80888 to donate $10 through your phone bill. Call 1-800-725-2769 , or visit disaster.salvationarmyusa.org . SAVE THE CHILDREN — The relief effort providing food, medical care and education to children is accepting donations online at j.mp/kbE3A6 . People can also call 1-800-728-3843 during business hours. WORLD VISION — The Christian humanitarian organization focuses on children, aiming to lessen the emotional and psychological damage that many children suffer during crises. To donate, visit www.worldvision.org or call 1-866-562-4453 .

Other ways to helpn If you would prefer to collect goods, confi rm an organization’s need for specifi c items before collecting. n If you plan to volunteer your time or services, volunteer wisely. Before traveling to an area to help, fi nd out if, where and when your help might be needed. Sources: Virginia Department of Emergency Management and The Associated Press

VIRGINIA KILLER TORNADOES1890-2010

April 24, 1896, 4:30 p.m. n 3 dead; 5 injured n The tornado moved northeast at Salem, destroying a bowling alley and a home.

May 2, 1929, 12:55 p.m. n 13 dead; 100 injured n A tornado at Rye Cove, 15 miles northwest of Gate City, Scott County, destroyed the school.

May 2, 1929, 3:30 p.m. n 3 dead; 30 injured n Homes and a school were torn apart as the funnel passed through Woodville, Rappahannock County .

May 2, 1929, 8:15 p.m. n 6 dead; 15 injured n Deaths were at LaGrange and Weaversville in a swath across Culpeper and Fauquier counties .

May 20, 1938, 3:30 p.m. n 3 dead; 2 injured n A house was destroyed south of Farnham, Richmond County, killing a mother and two children.

April 24, 1944, 6 p.m. n 3 dead; 6 injured n Homes and barns were destroyed on seven farms near North View and South Hill.

Sept. 30, 1959, 4:30 p.m.n 11 dead; 9 injured n Ten people died near Ivy in a frail duplex that had been used as the apple pickers’ bunk house.

Aug. 6, 1993, 12:30 p.m. n 4 dead; 246 injured n Virginia’s fi rst confi rmed violent tornado (EF-4) cut across the historic commercial district of Petersburg.

Source: The Tornado Project

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Documents

The Roanoke Times: Coverage of the Glade Spring tornado (April 29, 2011)