The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
by David Grimes, Quill Correspondent
Raritan-It happened the second weekend of May 1995. On Saturday, May 13, the day before Mother's Day, to be specific. "There were no weather sirens in town at that time," said Art Kane, president of the Raritan State Bank
A tornado, registered by the National Weather Service as an F4, struck the Henderson County village of Raritan and surrounding communities with such force that images of the destruction remain vivid in the memories of those who experienced the destruction of that late afternoon.
"Thankfully, there was no loss of life," Kane remembered. "But there were about a dozen families affected."
Bev Livermore, who lived on the family's 137-year-old farm just a quarter of a mile east of town remembers her husband, John, finishing his daily chores when the southwest sky became an unusual shade of green. The Livermores were baby-sitting their two grandchildren and preparing for a family birthday/Mother's Day celebration the next day.
"It looked stormy, but it looked really weird," Bev Livermore said. "We were watching the weather warnings on TV and finally went to the basement about 4:45 p.m."
"A good time to pray'
Pat Brokaw, who farms southwest of Raritan, recalls the same sky coloring about the same time that Saturday afternoon.
"It was a sickeningly green sky," Brokaw recalled. "And then it got so close and still It was terribly humid."
Brokaw gathered his family in the basement of their home and took one last look outside before retiring to the basement himself where the family began to pray.
Of his last look to the west before seeking shelter himself, Brokaw said, "It was confusing, and with all the dust it was difficult to see what was happening."
But when he saw his implement shed go down, he headed for the basement.
"It was a good time to pray," he said.
About three-quarters of a mile to the north of the Brokaw farm, Wendell Shaner was finishing his chores and preparing for a bowling tournament when he noticed a black cloud to the west of his acreage.
But he had no idea of the storm that was about to hit his property with such velocity the wind would carry him to a field east of the house, and send him for the next four days to McDonough District Hospital in Macomb.
"My wife was gone at that time and when she was gone I would keep all the drapes closed," Shaner said. "I remember hearing the windows breaking and feeling the house begin to shake."
That would be Shaner's last recollection until help arrived.
About that time the Brokaws were emerging from their basement. The family was safe and damage to the farm's outbuildings and home was minor, Pat Brokaw said.
He remembers seeing baseball and softball-size hail covering the ground.
But there was an unsettling feeling as he looked to the north - Shaners' home and property usually was visible from Brokaw's farm - as Pat Brokaw looked north and saw nothing but a stream of smoke.
He and his wife headed for their neighbors' property to find total devastation and the source of the smoke - an LP gas tank had been hit by the tornado and caught fire. But the Shaners were nowhere to be found.
As the Brokaws continued to search the area, Shaner was discovered in a field near the home. EMTs later arrived on the scene to take him to Macomb for medical care.
Wendell Shaner suffered several broken ribs and a punctured lung as well cuts and bruises but does not recall any of the ordeal.
The Brokaws continued to look for Shaner's wife, Marian, until it was learned she was away from home on a trip.
The Shaners had lost their home, livestock and several outbuildings. "The machinery shed was crumpled inward and several trees, about three feet in diameter, were pulled up by the roots," Shaner said.
The Shaners eventually rebuilt their home on the same site. Of Shaner's injuries and the damage inflicted on the Brokaw property, Brokaw said,
"We were blessed in that no one in our family was hurt. You can always go out and pick things up afterward if you're all healthy." "Everything started breaking'
Though cloistered in the basement with her family, Bev Livermore knew what was happening outside was devastating.
"Everything started breaking - you could hear the glass - and the air was so close you couldn't breathe," she recalled. "You hear about tornadoes sounding like a freight train, but we never heard that. There was just the sound of a loud roar."
But that was only the beginning for the Livermores.
"I looked over at our grandson John-John and he had been sucked away to the cinder-block basement wall," she said. The tornado was pulling him upward and he couldn't move. He was in a state of shock. "My husband grabbed him and held on or John-John would have been drawn up into it."
The Livermores' grandson was treated for hemorrhaging at a local hospital and released the same day, but the family farm and home had been completely destroyed, including about 40 head of cattle and 150 Duroc swine kept at the Livermores' hog confinement facility.
It would be near the end of the year - Dec. 29, 1995 - before the family rebuilt their home and things began to return to normal.
The three-story, Cape Cod-style home was constructed at about the same location as where the family's destroyed house was situated, with one difference.
"The storm came through from the southwest and at an angle," Bev Livermore said. "That's why we built the new home at angles, so we can see the sky from all directions if it happens again."
The Livermores' new home has another special feature.
"We have everything we need in the basement," Livermore said. Sleeping areas, kitchen area, dining room, living room and bathroom. "People tell us the chances are it won't happen again, but if it does we're ready."
A niece of the Livermores, Leslie Knox, Milan, works with the Red Cross in the Quad Cities and worked at Utica in the wake of a tornado's devastation there in April 2004.
Eight people were killed when they sought shelter in the basement of a local tavern, only to die when that structure caved in. "She told us that as bad as this tornado was, at least there was no loss of life," Livermore said. The personalities of the two storms may have factored into that. The Utica tornado sent structures caving inward while the tornado at Raritan - as in the case with the Livermore grandson - resulted in a vacuum effect, sucking buildings and whatever or whomever was inside, pulling upward.
A recollection of Pat Brokaw's may have some bearing on that quality of the Raritan tornado.
Referring to his last look to the west before moving to his basement, Brokaw said, "I didn't see a tail at the bottom of it. It wasn't what you think of as a typical tornado. That's how low it was to the ground."
The Evergreen Street route
After entering Raritan, the tornado continued its northeast track and began to take a toll on Evergreen Street, the last north-south street at the village's east end.
Several homes along Evergreen took hard hits from the tornado on that Saturday afternoon.
Dwayne and Carla Magee received a phone call from Dwayne's brother in LaHarpe, shortly before the tornado hit their neighborhood, telling them there was bad weather reported in the area and that they should probably seek shelter.
"We weren't watching TV at the time, either," Carla Magee remembered, "If he hadn't called when he did, I don't know what would have happened."
Magee said her husband had been in the yard with neighbors checking the skies.
"He came in the house and said that we should go to the basement," she said. "We did, and it hit our house about a minute later."
Magee said the destruction probably lasted about 90 seconds, "but it seemed like ten minutes."
When the Magees climbed from the basement they found the center of their home destroyed, with a grain elevator ladder laying where their porch had been.
"I still don't know who it belongs to," Carla Magee noted.
And yet another discovery from the pages of the strange and unexplained: the Magees' coffee maker.
"The walls were gone but the coffee maker was still setting where it had been on the counter. The plastic top was shattered, but the glass carafe was unbroken," Magee said.
The Magees' one-and-a-half story home had only a partial basement at the time of the storm, but by the time their new modular home was completed in September they had dug a full basement with a special area designated as sanctuary in the event of future storms.
"After that, I wouldn't live anywhere that didn't have one (a basement)," Magee said.
And the Magees now own a weather radio. "We were lucky," Magee concluded.
The Magees lost their furniture and clothes, but family mementos, including pictures of their wedding, were spared.
Selective destruction
The Henderson County Museum is located about three-quarters of a mile west of the Livermore farm and on the east edge of Raritan near Evergreen Street.
Cook said as the tornado approached Raritan from the west it suddenly veered to a northeast direction and hit the village cemetery, one-quarter mile south of town.
Headstones, Cook recalled, were turned completely around as one would turn a clock key.
But museum director Jim Cook said the museum - the old Raritan Grade School - did not suffer the damage some homes in and around town did on May 13, 1995, in part because of the structure's solid brick walls.
"Two windows blew out," Cook said. "And we had to replace some shingles on the roof." An implement dealership building across the street from the museum to the north suffered some wall and roof damage, as did the museum's blacksmith shop display, also to the north of the museum.
Pieces of tin from the blacksmith shop sheered in half nearby four-inch diameter trees. But between the time the two museum windows exploded, another unique form of devastation happened.
"There was a framed poster advertising the 1930 Henderson County Fair when it was held at Biggsville," Cook said. "The window sucked the poster out, but left the frame right where it was hanging on the wall."