Town’s Plan for ‘Big Weekend’ Lost in Rubble

It was to have been a big weekend for this cozy community nudged into Pennsylvania’s northwest corner.

On Saturday, Rogers Bros., the town’s biggest employer, was tossing an open house in its trailer-bed factory to commemorate 80 years in business. Today, a special religious ceremony had been scheduled for the graduating seniors at Northwestern High School.

But instead of celebrating, the 1,810 residents of Albion found themselves mourning their dead and picking through the rubble of their homes after killer tornadoes--the worst and deadliest in Pennsylvania history--swooped down from an eerie green and yellow sky late Friday afternoon, cutting a swath of destruction a mile long and half a mile wide.

‘Neighborhood Exploded’

“The funnel was as big as a football field,” recalled Russ Loomis, 61, who watched one of the twisters hop harmlessly over his convenience store and flatten neighboring houses on three sides. “The neighborhood exploded and was gone--all in 15 seconds.”

Entire city blocks were turned into twisted, crumbling jumbles of lumber, plaster, brick, tree limbs, furniture and bric-a-brac, all precariously threaded by downed, and sometimes live, power lines.

Pants and shirts dangled from the tops of many trees. A car somehow parked itself on the roof of one house, once a two-story structure, now knocked down about a story-and-a-half.

One resident scoured his neighborhood for hours Saturday, searching in vain for traces of the prized motorboat that had been parked in his driveway.

City Council President George Dahlin estimated that more than 100 homes were destroyed and that at least one-third of the city’s dwellings suffered some damage.

Twelve bodies were dug from the debris here and in neighboring Cranesville, where a mobile home park was wiped out. While most of the dead were found crushed under pieces of their own homes, one 5-year-old boy died when his mother put her arm around his neck in a protective embrace. Gale force winds snapped her arm forward and broke the youngster’s neck, neighbors said.

More than 100 townspeople were injured, many seriously. They were taken to hospitals in Erie, 25 miles to the northeast.

By late Saturday, Pennsylvania authorities had counted 61 dead as a result of Friday’s freak storms, which the National Weather Service said spawned 27 tornadoes in the region. Another 29 persons were reported killed in Ohio and Ontario.

Col. John Patten, executive director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, said the violent weather was extremely unusual for Pennsylvania, which has been hit by only 400 tornadoes in the 131 years since records have been kept. “This has been the most destruction caused by a series of tornadoes in the history of the Commonwealth,” said Patten, who estimated that the storms caused $14 million in damage in Erie County alone.

Gov. Dick Thornburgh, who toured Albion with Patten, declared 10 northwestern Pennsylvania counties disaster areas. At a stop at the junior high school, which had been turned into a Red Cross relief center, Thornburgh called the White House and urged special presidential assistant Mitch Daniels to persuade President Reagan to make a similar disaster declaration so that residents in the area can qualify for federal aid.

Troops Patrol Streets

Pennsylvania National Guard troops patrolled the streets of Albion on Saturday, guarding against looters and keeping away sightseers. Utility workers labored to cut off gas connections and restring downed phone and electric lines.

Meanwhile, some residents sifted through debris, searching for a few salvageable items of clothing or cherished pictures and mementos. A large plastic snowman, with ruddy red cheeks and a black top hat, poked out from a tumble of twisted tree trunks, torn carpets and downed wires in front of what had been a two-story brick house at 216 E. State St.

Down the street, at 240 E. State St., no one was home, but the family apparently was safe. “The Steve Smiths Are OK,” read a large sign wedged into the frame of what had been a front picture window.

Although city officials estimated that as many as 500 residents were at least temporarily homeless, only eight persons spent the night Friday at the Red Cross Evacuation Center. Martha Sherman, the area coordinator for the Red Cross, said that most of those displaced had either stayed with relatives or spent the night walking the streets.

“There were people in enough of a state of shock they were just wandering around,” she said.

One of those was Eugene O’Brien, a 64-year-old retired purchasing agent for Rogers Bros. O’Brien, in his backyard when the storm hit and unable to fight the wind to get indoors, lay down between two railroad ties and literally held on to them for dear life.

“I saw the funnel pass by 100 feet from me,” he recalled Saturday, still shuddering. “Homes, trailers, telephone poles were flying around 100 feet in the air. . . . I thought I was dying. I was crying and pulling my hair and screaming, ‘No, no, no!’ ”

“When it stopped, I went to help my neighbor down the street. He was ripped apart. Another neighbor was crying for help, but his legs were gone. There was nothing I could do.”

Mayor Bonda Dahlin, wife of the City Council head, said no plans had yet been made for a memorial service for the dead or for funerals. Hampering those arrangements was the damage suffered by most of the city’s churches, including the St. Lawrence Roman Catholic Church, where Ann Adamson’s son, Greg, was supposed to be married next week.

“He’s getting married, and the roof of the church is gone,” she said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”