Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Students described it as a typical tornado. First came the rain, followed by the hail. After a small calm it hit: an F4 tornado that would scare the campus of Kansas State University.
A Kansan photographer and I drove into Manhattan two days after the tornado, which covered an area of five miles, ripping through the college town last Thursday.
Clean-up crews had been working tirelessly since the incident, cleaning up blown over trees and debris. However, new student orientation was in full swing, as if the $20 million dollars of damage to campus had not phased them.
Video
See the cleanup after tornadoes hit Manhattan.
A smashed truck sits outside the home of Kent Dick, Manhattan resident, Friday, June 13. Dick said his house was a total loss but planned to rebuild.
A 'No Parking on Campus Streets' sign lays on a sidewalk at the Kansas State University campus Friday, June 13. Debris from the tornado still covered campus two days after the tornado tore through Manhattan and campus.
Piles of boards and broken doors pile up in yards in the Miller Ranch neighborhood Friday, June 13. Most all homes in the community recieved damages from the tornado that hit Manhattan, but no major injuries were reported
The engineering hall was one of the first buildings hit on campus. Yellow tape still trimmed the building. Dane Sylvester was one of the volunteers aiding with the clean-up.
“The main damage was to the atrium,” Sylvester said. “There was a lot of glass and water from the tornado.”
Dick Hayter, associate dean of external affairs, showed us around the building and we saw the clean-up that started the night of the bad weather.
“We got in here an hour later and you could see through the roof,” Hayter said.
During a tour from the roof of the building, he pointed out other buildings on campus affected by the storm. In what looked to be a perfectly diagonal line through town, the path of the tornado hit a fraternity house, the engineering building, a nuclear reactor, green houses and a wind erosion lab, along with countless cars and trees in its path.
Our next stop was the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house, whose roof still lay across the street. Outside a group of fraternity members sat and watched as construction crews reconstructed their roof.
Jared Brunkow, senior vice president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, was in the house when the storm hit. After watching the weather reports on the news of the invasive storm, Brunkow and other fraternity members sought shelter at the nearby engineering building’s loading dock. Along with five other people, the Greek members watched the tornado rip through their home and move onto the engineering building.
“There was green lightening and then a calm,” Brunkow said.
While hiding in safety, Brunkow watched a car crash into the bay doors of the engineering building.
After surviving the initial tornado, all the members started to clean up the surrounding area. An apartment building located across the street from the fraternity house also lost its roof. Brunkow went to help where needed. The fraternity brothers assisted one couple in particular, newlyweds who barely had time to recoup from their honeymoon.
“We were cleaning up their stuff and found all of these bows and wrapping paper in all the debris,” Brunkow said.
The cost of the damage to their fraternity house is still undetermined. Most of the ruined material included carpets, mattresses and bedding, but because of the brick construction, the foundation of their house remained intact.
“Lots of other chapters and alumni are coming to help us out,” Brunkow said.
The tight-knit fraternity was expecting fellow members from a Wichita chapter the next day further clean up their house.
Aubree Casper, sophomore opinion editor at Kansas State’s Collegian, had been covering the story round the clock.
Casper and fellow reporters told us of Miller Ranch, a residential neighborhood that had been hit hard.
As we drove up the ridge that entered the neighborhood, we saw the same debris that was sprinkled throughout Manhattan. But a sharp turn down a hill opened us up to the devastation. At one time properties in this area topped $1 million, but now the houses were reduced to sheets of concrete. Red Cross tents littered the streets and families stood in a mess of their former homes.
It was clear that by the time we had gotten there the shock was gone. Families sat in the frames of their houses at kitchen islands or other remaining parts, prepping themselves for another round of clean-up. Spray painted “X”s adorned homes that were no longer habitable. Unfortunately the further we drove into the community the more “X”s we saw.
It was an unexplainable sight, one that no words will do justice. It was the sight of children carrying orange buckets, lending a hand in the clean-up process. It was a sight of realization that the homes where families were raised were now gone. It was a sight of a community banded together to rebuild.
A special thanks to Aubree Casper and the Kansas State Collegian staff for their assistance in our reporting efforts.
— Edited by Matt Hirschfeld
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