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Thursday, May 29, 1997

Devastated families recall sights, sounds of deadly storm

By KELLEY SHANNON / Associated Press Writer

JARRELL, Texas (AP) - It looked at first like a skinny little tree trunk. Then the tornado turned into a raging monster 100 yards wide, spitting up dust and flattening everything in its path.

"We watched it coming. We spotted it. We watched it as it got bigger," a tearful Tracy Arnold recalled Wednesday, the morning after a huge twister devastated this tiny town, killing dozens of people.

Inside her family-built, rock-walled home with her two young sons and a niece and nephew, Ms. Arnold prepared for the tornado's onslaught by moving cars into the garage and bolting all the doors.

Then she and the four children huddled together in a closet to await the twister's wrath, until her brother-in-law arrived and said they all needed to leave - and fast.

"If it wouldn't have been for him, we would have all been killed," she said, explaining that they drove away from the tornado, taking refuge in their bare feet under a highway underpass until law officers arrived.

"Our whole house is gone," Ms. Arnold said.

The house, located near the Double Creek Estates subdivision, was one of the first hit when the storm thundered in late Tuesday afternoon.

Other homes - as many as 50 in Double Creek Estates - also were demolished, and the occupants weren't so lucky.

Tom Sessums, a Boy Scout master from Granger, came to Jarrell on Wednesday to help with relief efforts after learning a longtime friend and her 5-year-old grandson were killed in their home.

"You know somebody that long and then they're gone," Sessums said. "It's sad. It really is."

Virginia Davidson rode out the storm in her bathtub, covered with a blanket. That is until she and the tub and the blanket were sucked up into the rumbling blackness of the twister.

"The bathtub and me were lifted, probably with the house," she said.

Afterward, Ms. Davidson found herself in a road a few hundred feet away. She suffered cuts to her leg, but was mobile Wednesday and able to talk about her ordeal outside a school cafeteria that has become a victims' shelter.

Some of the victims and their families gathered Wednesday inside the sanctuary of the First Baptist Church in Jarrell, where county victims assistance workers offered counseling.

The Southern Baptist Convention parked trucks and set up tables outside, providing food and water.

Down the road, residents left homeless by the storm wandered streets and fields picking up mementos strewn across the countryside, hoping they would find some of their own keepsakes.

"There's pictures, there's postcards, there's parts of board games," said Stephanie Peterson, 21, saving photographs she'd found, intending to hold onto them for their owners. "I would want them if they were mine."

Everywhere, people had stories of the terrible tornado.

Cindy Carroll, who lives on the outskirts of Double Creek Estates, escaped unharmed from the twister with her 14-month-old grandson, Dylan Peteete. Ms. Carroll walked around Jarrell on Wednesday, pushing Dylan in his stroller, shaken by the tragedy.

"We could see it coming," Ms. Carroll said, as thoughts of the tornado brought tears to her eyes. "It looked like a pencil right at first, and then it just grew and grew and grew."

"My house may be standing," she said. "But my heart is broken for these other people." Send a Letter to the Editor about This Story | Start or Join A Discussion about This Story
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