Day of disaster

March 13 marks the 20th anniversary of a day central Kansas Mennonites will never forget: A tornado ripped through a large part of Hesston, Kan., but, amazingly, killed no one in town. The massive storm (graded F5, the highest power, with winds over 300 mph) damaged or destroyed 225 homes and 21 businesses in Hesston.

My memory of the disaster is dominated by the fact that the next day brought the most challenging Mennonite Weekly Review deadline I’ve ever had. The tornado hit Hesston about 5:35 p.m. on a Tuesday, and by the time we learned the enormity of what had happened, darkness had fallen.

First thing the next morning I headed for Hesston, about eight miles from Newton, to collect photos and quotes for a couple of hours. In those days we had to develop the film and print the photos in our darkroom — plus write the story and paste up the paper that day, so time was short.

My other strong memory is that a second tornado formed north of Hesston and passed by Goessel, where it destroyed the barn at my parents-in-law’s place, but missed the house, where they were riding out the storm in the basement. At another rural Marion County house, the tornado killed 68-year-old Ruth Voth, so we knew what could have happened.

A Wichita Eagle story on the 20th anniversary had an amazing fact I didn’t know: The Hesston tornado was the first to hit a town of any size since since Wichita Falls, Texas, in 1979.

In the issue of MWR a week after the tornado, our lead story began: “The disaster happened with shocking suddenness. Just as quickly, it seemed, the people of Hesston pulled together, picked up the pieces and made a new beginning.”