Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 18, 1994 TAG: 9408180122
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By TODD JACKSON and MICHAEL STOWE STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: RIDGEWAY LENGTH: Long
Before going to bed, Williams and her 5-year-old grandson knelt down to say a prayer.
"Dear Lord, take care of me, my children and my grandchildren," she remembered saying.
"But I didn't say anything about the beauty shop," she said, pointing to the few remains of the salon next door where her daughter has cut hair for a decade.
The tornado that ripped through the outskirts of Martinsville around 2:45 a.m. Wednesday lifted the top half of Kim's Kut & Kurl from its foundation and dropped it in the northbound lanes of U.S. 220, leaving pictures hanging on the walls of what was left of the shop.
For nearly seven hours early Wednesday, state police where forced to close the road - the main thoroughfare for that part of the county - while debris caused by the high winds was cleared away.
The storm, which cut a 41/2-mile path starting near Ridgeway and ending at the Smith River just outside the Martinsville city limits, damaged 59 homes and 13 companies. Estimated damage totals $9 million, said fire marshal Steve Eanes.
Henry County declared a state of emergency. No one was killed, and a handful of people reported minor injuries.
Eanes said the National Weather Service gave the tornado an F2 rating. Winds reached speeds close to 160 mph.
An F0 rating is the least severe, and an F5 is given to the most severe tornadoes. The twister that hit the Petersburg, Va., area last year was an F4, Eanes said.
Two residential subdivisions and the Martinsville Industrial Park were the areas hardest hit by Wednesday's tornado.
Folk living near Kim Savedge's beauty shop on Speedway Road are used to the deafening roar of the cars zooming around Martinsville Speedway, which is less than a mile from their front doors.
But Barbara Williams said the tornado that roused her Wednesday made the race traffic sound like a low buzz.
"My goodness, it was 10 times worse," she said. "You just wouldn't believe it."
"You know how everyone says it sounds like a freight train? Well, it does," added Savedge.
Orbreyn Williams heard his wife yell "TORNADO!" about 2:45 a.m. He said he jumped out of bed, grabbed their grandson and fell on top of him on the floor.
Orbreyn Williams works for the Martinsville Speedway and had a large NASCAR memorabilia collection stored in a room adjacent to his daughter's beauty shop. The tornado sucked it up, Richard Petty autographed picture and all.
Flying bricks smashed the hood of his new pickup, and a tree fell on the family car.
But Williams was smiling.
"The man upstairs may have been trying to warn me about something," he said. "There's nothing I can do about it, so I'm not going to worry about it. I'm just glad everybody's OK."
The Red Cross opened a shelter at Rich Acres Christian Church, but no one was using it late Wednesday afternoon. The shelter was closed at 5:30 p.m., but the Red Cross was continuing to prepare meals at a command post set up beside Tomlinson Funeral Home, where a large group of volunteers and rescue workers planned strategy and fueled up.
The tornado cut a swath about 100 feet from the funeral home and the house of the owner, Charlie Tomlinson. No damage was done to either structure.
Tomlinson woke up during the storm, then went outside to survey the damage minutes later.
"It was eerie," he said. "There's always traffic on [U.S] 220, but there wasn't a car in sight. The dogs weren't even barking."
Henry Oliver lives behind the funeral home and was one of the few people awake when the tornado struck. He had gotten up about 2:30 a.m., just half an hour before he was supposed to report to work at J & J Southeast.
When he heard the storm's whirring, Oliver grabbed his wife, Bessie, and pulled her into the hall.
"He just grabbed me, and I grabbed him, and we just held each other," said Bessie Oliver, still visibly shaken more than 12 hours later.
Oliver said he couldn't believe the damage the tornado inflicted on his property in the less than one minute that it blew by.
The winds lifted his 1989 Nissan Sentra from the ground and dropped it 14 feet away, then snatched up his 4,000-pound camper and dumped it on top of the car.
Oliver sat beside the destruction Wednesday afternoon waiting for an insurance adjuster to arrive.
Bessie Oliver said she is thankful none of her friends or family was hurt, but that it still hurts to see the roof get ripped off the home in which she lived for decades.
"I cried anyway, because you can't ever get anything back like it was," she said.
Mark Sparks, who lives in the same Arlington Heights neighborhood as the Olivers, said he was amazed by the tornado's force.
"All of a sudden, it seemed like the air was just being sucked out of the house," he said.
Downed trees and power lines prevented everyone from leaving Arlington Heights until nearly noon Wednesday.
Just up the road from Arlington Heights is the Martinsville Industrial Park, which may have been the hardest hit area of the county.
The tornado tore away the roof and an entire side of CSI Services, a contractor for DuPont.
The scene was the same at an apparel warehouse for Pluma Inc. Boxes of green, blue and gray sweatshirts sat in the cement rubble, splotched with mud and soaked with water.
But J & J Southeast, located in the same industrial park, received little damage and only canceled work for one shift.
While some homes and businesses were nearly destroyed, their next-door neighbors weren't touched.
"I didn't even have a leaf move in my yard," said Harold Isley, a resident of Sheffield Terrace. He slept through the tornado.
Two streets away, Martha Nester paced dejectedly across her mud-soaked carport.
"I have no back yard, I have no back yard," she repeated trance-like.
Her back yard was still there, however. It just wasn't visible under the more than three dozen trees that had toppled during the night. Fortunately, only a few struck the house, causing minor structural damage.
"I was scared to death, and now we're just trying to get through this mess," she said.
Across the street from the Nesters, the wind picked up a 4,800-pound, 24-foot trailer from Richard Flippen's driveway and slammed it against his home. The top part of the camper, which the Flippen family used only once, was found on the roof.
Today, Eanes said damage-assessment teams will continue to compile reports that must be filed with the state Department of Emergency Service within 72 hours following a natural disaster.
U.S. Rep. L.F. Payne, state Rep. Roscoe Reynolds and state Sen. Virgil Goode will visit the area hit by the tornado Thursday, according to a spokesman for Payne.
Eanes said he did not know if the county will apply for federal disaster aid.
Residents still in need of assistance are asked to call the Red Cross at 632-5127.
by CNB