ry per
ay
&
Dallas Post/Ed Campbell
one was seriously injured.
Damages
FR
(Contirined from page 1)
John Burns, another resident of
Annabelle Ave., was one of several
eyewitnesses, claiming he actually
saw the.twister approach.
“I saw something like a funnel
cloud coming over the hill,” he
exclaimed, pointing toward the
mountain. A gaping hole in the trees
on the mountain became the focal
point of the tornado’s entrance to
Harveys® Lake as weekend specta-
tors often gazed toward the moun-
tain, learning the origin of the
destrugfive storm.
“Things were blowing all
aroundy2-said Burns. “The rain was
(coming down) in sheets, and it was
hailing=<Fhe hail stones were bigger
than gelfzballs.”
Burfi§islawn furniture, which is
solid weod and metal and weighed
approximately 20 to 25 pounds, was
tossed “about in his back yard like
toys. .A”metal shed, also owned by
Burn§ZWas lifted, crushed, and
landed~about 10 feet from its origi-
nal resting place.
Thomds K. Hastings of Ridge
Street-has lived in the Sunset area
for the past 17 years and claims he
could never see the lake from his
home because of all the trees. “Now
I can-(see the lake),” hee said.
“There: must have been at least 30
trees taken down around my home
alone.
“It’s got to be the worst thing I’ve
ever seen around here,” he contin-
ued. “But I'll tell you one thing, I
give .a..lot of credit to all the
volunteers and- workers who have
been “lrere all night and all day
cleaning up. They’ve been fantas-
tie.
One “lake business that suffered
major-damage was Hoss’ Garden
Hut. Jeif Hosle, owner of the hut,
estimated damages to his business
and preperty to be around $15,000 to
$20,000...
“Were out of business right
now,’ said Hosle, ‘but we may be
able fo-Gome back. It’s the peak of
the seaStn right now, though.”
Hosle«was inside the building
when. .the storm hit and explained
the experience.
“Fipsteof all, I heard a loud noise.
Next IBing I knew, things were
blowing all over the place. Glass
and debris were flying through the
air. I just hid inside until the noise
stopped. When I looked outside, I
saw that the wood shed behind my
building had blown 20 feet on to
three cars and my boat. It was a
mess, but yet we've very lucky.”
Another twister, or perhaps the
same one, touched down earlier in
the area of Harris Pond in Sweet
Valley.
According to Robert Walsh, Fire
Chief for the Sweet Valley Volunteer
Fire Company, cost estimates of the
damage in Ross Township was
approximately $250,000.
“We had about 16 homes that
were damaged,” said Walsh. “One
was totally destroyed, and another
was partially destroyed.”
A home in the Sweet Valley area
owned by Bob and Marietta Bach-
man suffered the most extensive
damage as the roof and most of one
side of the house blew away and
scattered themselves in a nearby
field owned by the Don Honeywell
Farms. The Bachmans, who were
visiting Mrs. Bachman’s mother in
the hospital at the time of the
storm, returned home to find sev-
eral inches of rain in their home.
The most serious injury from the
storm occurred near Harris Pond
when a car containing three people
was literally picked up, twisted
around and dumped, upside down,
in Harris Pond. Eight-year-old
Joseph Matysik of Hunlock Creek
was the most seriously injured in
the incident and, after spending two
days at Nesbitt Memorial Hospital
in Kingston, was transferred to Chil-
dren’s Hospital in Philadelphia on
Sunday.
Other area residents who weren’t
affected directly by the twisters
were still victims of the storm.
Because of lightning strikes and
wind damage, thousands of UGI
customers were left without power
throughout the night.
According to Richard Gill, spokes-
man for UGI, the major power
outages were: Lower Demunds
due to lightning; Orange, Country
Club Road and Demunds, from 6:30
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Opinions differ
'By DOTTY MARTIN
Associate Editor
Tom Clark, meteorologist for WNEP-TV Channel 16,
‘reported Friday night that the entire state of Pennsyl-
vania doesn’t see more than two or three tornadoes a
year and the Wilkes-Barre-Scranton area doesn’t
usually experience more than one tornado every two
or three years.
For those of us who have resided in this area all of
our lives and who are rapidly completing our third
decade of existence, tornadoes are a characteristic of
other areas, not ours.
Because of our unfamiliarity with tornadoes and
their ways of acting, opinions seem to differ as to what
should be done in the event of one. Unlike floods, such
as the Agnes Flood which devastated the Wyoming
Valley area back in 1972, tornadoes leave very little or
no time at all for preparation.
Clark, who reported that 87 percent of all tornadoes
travel from the southwest direction to the northeast
direction (Sweet Valley is in the southwest with
Harveys Lake to its northeast), explained that torna-
does are caused by a difference in air pressure.
According to Clark, the air pressure inside the
funnel of a tornado is very low while the air pressure
outside the funnel is high, creating an ‘explosion’
effect.
The television meteorologist explained that when
windows in a home are open, it eliminates the
difference in air pressure inside and outside the
funnel, allowing the tornado a means of escape.
Jim Drury, of Annabelle Avenue at Harveys Lake,
whose home was damaged by Friday's tornado,
doesn’t agree with Clark and Keith Delong of Sweet
Valley said a home on his street in North Lake
contradicts Clark’s advice.
“I was trying to close my diningroom window,”
Drury said. The interior of the Drury home suffered
minor damage as leaves from trees, along with flying
debris, parked themselves inside his home.
“There are other houses around here whose windows
were all shut,” he said, pointing to the undamaged
fumes on his street. “And look, nothing happened to
them.”
Delong, who lives in the hardest hit area of Sweet
Valley but whose home was untouched, echos Drury’s
feelings and questions the meteorologist’s advice.
“Those people down there are gone away,” he said,
pointing to the house. “The house is all closed up and
all the windows are shut. Nothing happened to it.”
Ironically, that untouched house stands right next to
one that saw friends and neighbors ripping off what
was left of its garage Saturday morning.
Mrs. Betty Gosart, of Sweet Valley, was unsure of
what to do when the storm reached the area around
her home.
“I really didn’t realize what was going on. I-looked
out my window and could see a tree that was bending
over from the wind,” Mrs. Gosart said. “I was
wondering just how much wind that tree could take.
Mrs. Gosart laughingly admitted that everything she
did was the wrong thing to do in a tornado.
“I stood there in the middle of my living room
wondering what I should do. I’ve been told now that
during a tornado, you should open your windows, but I
closed mine. Even worse, I went up into my attic to
close some windows. If that roof had ever gone, I
probably would have gone with it!”’
Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a concrete
answer as to what one should do in the event of a
tornado. Possible the best thing to do now is hope it
never happens again!
Scary
(Continued from page-1)
room. The Drurys, who operate
Drury’s Delicatessen on the other
side of the highway from their
home, were spared any damage to
the business.
Harold ‘‘Buzz’’ Taylor, proprietor
of Dentiform at Sunset and whose
1978 Ford pickup truck was turned
upside down by the violent winds,
remembers holding his wife as
tightly as possible.
“The door to the building here
blew open,” said Taylor, pointing to
the door of his business which is
located in the same building as
Drury’s Delicatessen. ‘My wife got
up to close it and it blew open
again. Then, the whole building
shook. I grabbed my wife, turned
away from the door and held her as
tight as I could.”
After a few seconds, Taylor
turned to look out the door, only to
see the likes of things he had never
seen before.
“Everything was flying around,”
he said. “Flying quickly and with-
out direction. The sky was gray and
black and it was raining hard...it
was raining real hard. But, every-
thing was flying around out there.”
Taylor said he then heard a
thump, but couldn’t be sure of what
it was. When the dust settled, he
found his truck parked neatly ouside
his building - upside down.
That same fear was abounding in
Sweet Valley where the tornado
started, leaving nothing standing in
its path.
Rita and Michael Brody, whose
home on Lakeview Drive in the
North Lake section of Sweet Valley,
was undamaged, they said they
heard the noise of the wind, but
were unsure of what it was. Mr.
Brody had just returned from pick-
ing up pizza when the storm was at
its worse.
He explained that when the storm
let up a bit, at least enough to see,
he made a dash for the Bachman
residence near his. That home, just
three years old and owned by Mar-
jetta and Bob Bachman, had been
completely destroyed, as its roof
and one end were blown into a
nearby field of sunflowers owned by
Don Honeywell.
The Bachmans reportedly were
visiting Mrs. Bachman’s mother in
the hospital at the time of the storm
and were called home by a relative
who lives nearby.
“I didn’t know if anyone was in
there,” Brody said Saturday morn-
ing, pointing to the Bachman resi-
dence. So, I ran over there to see if
they needed help. There was
already an inch and a half of rain in
that house when I got in there. I
couldn’t believe it.”
Keith and Chris Delong, also of
Lakeview Drive, were among the
fortunate ones, having suffered no
damage other than the ruination of
some children’s toys that were in
their yard at the time of the storm.
Mrs. Delong recalled on Saturday
morning that she and her husband
were hanging curtains when the
tornado started its path of destruc-
tion and were unsure of which
direction it would take.
Dallas Post/Ed Campbell
She reflected on her feelings Sat-
urday morning, likening Friday eve-
ning’s events to one big nightmare.
As she looked across the street from
her home into the Honeywell field,
she pointed to a 2x4 that had been
planted straight up in the ground
and from which was waving a piece
“Look at that,” she said. “I wish
somebody would take that down.
It’s such an eery sight, almost as if
the Indians were here and left that
to remind us.” The board was part
of the Backman home that had been
blown all over the neighborhood and
tornado’s destructive manner.
“When my husband told me the
roof had gone off the neighbor’s
house, I couldn’t believe it,”’ Mrs.
Delong added. “Oh, it was just
awful. I don’t ever want to live
was a constant reminder of the through anything like that again.”
of insulation.
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