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Devastating Storms Kill 7 In Arkansas, Spawn 25 Tornadoes

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The Associated Press

Published: May 3, 2008

SILOAM SPRINGS, Ark. - The storm that blew through the Choice Mobile Home Park about 4:15 a.m. Friday hit one family there much harder than the rest.

It snapped a tree that fell on top of a mobile home, slamming into the bedroom shared by a 10-year-old boy and his older sister. The boy screamed, "Get it off me. Get it off me," as neighbors in this town near the Oklahoma line rushed in to help.

Hustling to get the boy out of the storm debris, neighbor Chad Tilghman didn't realize that the boy's 15-year-old sister lay dead less than a foot away - separated by a mattress of their bunk beds. The boy suffered minor injuries.

"She was on the top bunk. He was on bottom. When it fell it just crushed her and pinned her on top of him," Tilghman said.

Eliana Chacon was among seven people killed in Arkansas by thunderstorms that tore up parts of four states late Thursday and early Friday, producing as many as 25 tornadoes.

The storms ripped off roofs and toppled train cars near Kansas City, Mo.; pelted parts of Oklahoma with hail; and knocked over tents at a popular open-air market in east Texas. Five of those killed were in two north-central Arkansas counties, Conway and Van Buren, that also saw fatalities from a tornado Feb. 5.

"This year it just seems like we're getting pounded," Van Buren County Sheriff Scott Bradley said.

He said a man, a woman and a preschool-age child died when the storm hit their house just south of Bee Branch.

"There wasn't anything left," Bradley said. "It was demolished."

Another child who lived at the home had already left for school, escaping injury.

One death was reported in Pulaski County, south of Little Rock, and a father and son died in Conway County when a possible tornado hit their mobile home. A twister demolished a chicken farm in Center Springs, leaving thousands of dead birds on the ground.

Around the Van Buren County town of Damascus, deputies, firefighters and volunteers were going farm-to-farm to check on everyone.

Just north of town the wind knocked the roof off a new church that has yet to hold its first service. Members of a work crew ran inside the Southside Baptist Church after a neighbor warned them of the coming storm; they later exchanged soaked clothes for white choir robes.

More than a dozen injuries were reported, and about 350 homes were damaged or destroyed in several Arkansas counties. Nearly 6,000 homes and businesses lost power in the state.

Greg Carbin, a meteorologist for the national Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said as many as 25 tornadoes may have cut through stretches of Oklahoma, Arkansas, eastern Kansas and western Missouri.

About 40,000 lost power at the peak of the storms in the Kansas City area, where two small tornadoes touched down and several minor injuries were reported.

Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser said 100 homes suffered significant damage in the city alone. Damage was also reported in the suburbs and in Lawrence, to the west. An 18-wheeler was blown over on Interstate 29 in Riverside, near five empty train cars that were toppled.

In northeast Kansas City, dozens of homes had chunks of their roofs missing, and trees were knocked from their roots and lying along the roads and in ditches. Police blocked off roads around the damaged neighborhoods Friday.

A twister ripped the roof off 74-year-old Ann Johnson's duplex in the suburb of Gladstone.

"The ceiling actually came down on top of her while she was in bed," said her daughter, Cindy Hopkins.

Johnson was able to roll out from under the collapsed debris but cut her foot on glass from a shattered window. A neighbor who heard her yells helped nurse the wound until paramedics arrived. Johnson, whose cut required seven stitches, remained at the hospital Friday afternoon.

"The fact that she is alive is the greatest gift," said Hopkins, of Richmond.

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