For a small Kansas community, a 1991 tornado brings a violent anniversary; then, on the 31st anniversary, another crushing tornado swept through the streets of Andover
Friday, April 29, 2022.
2:58 am.
I’m awakened by the incessant noise of buzzing. I check my watch- it reads 2:58 a.m. GMT, making it 8:58 p.m. home in Kansas. Incoming texts, which woke me up, are from my mother, my grandparents and school friends. A tornado has just hit Andover. This is the place in which I grew to adulthood, met some of my dearest friends, dated my first boyfriend and finished out my school years. No one knows very much information; all that they know is that the damage isn’t looking good and it’s getting dark, they’re all without electricity. They tell me to go back to bed, everyone is seemingly safe, and there isn’t anything I can do from half a world away. Of course, they’re right, so I go back to sleep, not knowing the nightmare that would be there when I wake up.
Friday, April 26, 1991.
4:30 pm.
For the community of and surrounding Wichita, Kansas, spring storms are such a common occurrence that they are hardly noticed. From March to May each year, the weather has a habit of taking on all four seasons in a day. It’s not uncommon to grab a winter coat, heading out early to allow time for the car to warm up in the mornings, only to be stripped down to the least amount of clothing possible by midday. Like most areas in the Midwest region of the United States, weather discrepancies have begun to not be given enough thought to be considered an inconvenience, nevertheless a danger.
That said, it is not surprising that residents didn’t blink an eye when the National Weather Service, the agency responsible for distributing weather alerts, updates, and emergency information, issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for Harper County, the area just southwest of Wichita.
After school sports continued, work days were nearly wrapped for the day, and dinner plans were concocted. No reason to panic, they said, and so residents carried on.
5:00 pm.
Karlene Lovelady, aged 16 in 1991, is upset with her father. He’s told her to stay in tonight, but she has a concert planned at the local university, Wichita State University. She has a date, so obviously, Karlene wants to do anything possible to get out. He told her after school, “‘You’re not going to be able to go out, there’s bad weather coming’,” she remembers. “And I said, ‘It’s not like a tornado is going to hit Andover, dad.’”
Meanwhile, 65 mile per hour winds and golf ball-sized hail are observed by locals in Harper County. It’s annoying, they will have to get their cars’ damage fixed later on this week, but really, it’s nothing too serious.
5:30 pm.
The National Weather Service has deemed the storm a supercell thunderstorm. These types of storms are the least common, but they have a tendency to produce severe weather, such as above average winds, hail, and possibly even tornadoes. According to the NWS, the supercell is exceptionally unique; it contains a large, continuous updraft, coined a mesocyclone. If the conditions are just right, the supercell thunderstorm can last for hours.
There are three types of supercell storms, classic, high precipitation and low precipitation, and once they are formed in their entirety, they are incredibly easy to spot due to their tell-tale shape both visually and on radar. This puts both meteorologists and residents of the area at an extreme advantage and gives them what weather often selfishly steals, time.
Since tornadoes are created by the mixing of rising hot air with the colder, higher atmospheric air, tornadoes are quite rare. Both atmospheric and climate conditions must be perfect and a strong, vertical wind draft must be present in order for the thunderstorm to begin to rotate. If this rotation is persistent and creates a deep enough rotation, the supercell is extremely likely to create downdraughts, the very beginning of the classic tornado cone shape.
5:35 pm.
Wichita’s identity is quite frankly all over the place. On a global scale, most people have never heard of the town aside from possible exposure to the Wizard of Oz or Glen Campbell’s 70s rock ballad, “Wichita Lineman”. For many Americans, Doctor George Tiller put Wichita, Kansas on the radar. Tiller was one of three doctors in the nation who performed late-term abortions in 1975, and he gained national attention because of the still heated debate surrounding the right to pregnancy termination in the country. Tiller was the medical director of Women’s Health Care Services, and due to the nature of his work and the hot political climate, his name was well-known around the country, and often not in a positive light.
Wichita is still at the forefront of the ever-so-relevant abortion debate in America. With some of the tightest abortion restrictions enacted in neighbouring states Texas and Oklahoma, Kansas is taking on the overflow of patients. The state has a total of four abortion clinics, with two of them being in Wichita.
The Wichita State University Shockers, sporting their stark black and school-bus yellow team colours, have often graced the screens of viewers and the courts of various national basketball championships. While the Division I team has never formally won a National title, fans continue to support the team in their homes, local sports bars or their home turf, Charles Koch Arena, without fail or hesitation.
Lastly, and most importantly for the town’s economy, Wichita is the aeroplane manufacturing capital of the country resulting in a large population of the US Air Force being cycled throughout the area with the presence of McConnell Air Force Base. The workings of the base, while highly confidential and cut off from the public, have been a massive player in the development of the aviation industry. Since the base employs nearly 3,500 active military members, the resources, materials and national defence weapons come in heaps. This is what made the news that a tornado was headed straight for the base even more concerning.
5:49 pm.
With news of a tornado touching ground slightly east of Clearwater, just 32 miles to the southwest of the Wichita suburb Andover, residents began to sweat a little. While, at this point, it still isn’t likely that the tornado will be extremely dangerous, the NWS issued an emergency statement for all residents near Haysville, Derby and Mulvane to seek immediate shelter.
6:09 pm.
Nearly 20 minutes after a cyclone touched down a tornado warning was issued for east Sedgwick County and Andover (Andover is the farthest west city in Butler County, so many announcements and warnings issued to Wichita are also applied to Andover due to their proximity). National Weather Service records show that “a very dangerous storm” is underway, and the tornado, continuing on its path heading northeast, striking Haysville at F2/F3 magnitude.
6:24 pm.
The tornado, reaching McConnell Air Force Base, has already travelled quite a distance and shows no intention of easing up. Because of the equipment and resources found on the Base, the situation became increasingly more dangerous, and the tornado narrowly misses a line of B1-B bomber jets. Had these jets been in the direct line of the cyclone, not only would damages be exponentially more, but casualties also would have skyrocketed with the addition of explosions.
6:30 pm.
Warning sirens in Andover are triggered, but no sound is omitted. With the storm rapidly approaching the city, first responders do their best to warn residents to take shelter, including driving through the Golden Spur Mobile Home Park. Police, firefighters and ordinary citizens give all effort to spread the word and to warn anyone within sight to take shelter, but as these storms often go, time passed exceptionally quick, and eventually, even the responders had to make a choice of continuing to do what they were doing or to take shelter themselves.
6:43 pm.
Sightings of the tornado along the neighbouring highway 54 indicated that the supercell was indeed heading directly for Andover, and it was heading there quickly. Within three minutes, the southside of the suburb was in the heat of the storm. While this part of the town is largely rural, mostly housing a water treatment plant and farm land, the occasional country home felt the wrath of the 250 MPH winds.
Residents of the Golden Spur Mobile Home Park had a front row seat to the show the tornado had to give, and Duke Evans retrieved his new, shiny VHS video recorder. The tornado, now at its peak size and intensity, ravaged up Andover Road, directly toward the Mobile Home Park.
Tricia Lee, 10-years-old at the time, recalled, “I don’t think it will ever escape my mind,” she said. “It was so black. I just remember, it was just so black.”
6:45 pm.
13 people were killed in Golden Spur alone. Without functioning alarm systems, the tornado completely flattened 300 homes in Andover, leaving over a third of its residents homeless (the population at the time was around 4,300).
Ten businesses and two churches suffered the same, cruel fate, yet the most shocking fact of the storm is the physical size. Reaching its peak just before it struck the suburb, it was 600 yards wide, travelled 74 kilometres and was on the ground for just over an hour.
7:10 pm.
After 25 more minutes on the ground, the tornado eventually resided back into its supercell cloud. Passing further to the northeast of Andover, additional damage occurred, leaving debris and rescue efforts to the coming dusk. Impending darkness would quickly be underway, and as a town without electricity or connection to outside assistance, the following hours looked grim and their world stopped on its axis.
“You were standing in Hell, basically,” Karlene Lovelady recalled. And hell is precisely what it was. With the following day’s sunrise came the shocking reality of what had truly transpired and the potentially horrifying fear that residents were impending rescue.
Although, with any tragedy comes resilience and companionship, and the community of Andover is a prime example. Neighbours, left with nothing but the clothes on their backs, joined first responders in securing the area, searching for victims and offering assistance in any way they could. “You really just saw people pulling together, people helping each other out with no expectations in the end,” Lee said.
Rebuilding efforts, amounting to multiple millions, has left the suburb more affluent and populated than ever expected. Now with a population of just over 14,000, the city has maintained its sense of community brought on by the tragedy. Priding itself on its expanding and sought-after school systems, sporting accomplishments and community values, Andover has truly delved into the classic suburban trope. Hands down, it is one of the area’s most well-off communities (median property value, $147,000, is double that of the neighbouring county, $72,000) and it is only expected that its population will continue to grow over the coming years.
All of the community’s success, brought about by the infrastructure developments post-1991, is rooted in the memory of the 21 deaths resulting from the Andover Tornado. Residents, while they will never forget the tragedy that took place in their sleepy, normal town, have begun to heal, both physically and emotionally. And now, 31 years later, nearly the exact same thing has happened again.
Saturday, April 30, 2022
The next morning, I wake up and begin my routine as usual- clean my teeth, get back in bed and wait until the very last minute to finally get ready. I can’t help but keep thinking how strange of a dream I had last night. It must have been brought about by the recent anniversary of the 1991 tornado, after all, it was all over the local social media.
Family back home are usually all asleep until at least midday my time, and I generally try to stay off the phone in the mornings, hanging onto the peaceful minutes to myself. So when I returned to the room from making coffee to an incoming phone call from a friend back home, I knew something was happening.
I asked, “Hello? Is everything okay?” to my longest friend, Shelby Melton, whom I met at dance when we were both three years old.
She says my name, “Cerah”, followed by a deafening silence.
“Everyone's fine, but everything’s gone,” she responded with a gut wrenching tone.
The F5 tornado ravished through Andover as though it was chasing its mother 31 years too late. Around 1,000 buildings were severely damaged, approximately 200 responders from 30 different districts were dealing with the damage and rescue pursuits. Directly after the storm, 15,000 people were left without power, and cell towers were down, meaning people outside of the area couldn’t contact their potentially affected families.
There are murmurs of potential injuries, but so far, no deaths. News articles and police social media accounts are releasing safety points and local churches giving out free resources to those in need, and major highways are closed due to uncleared debris, essentially putting a town in crisis on lockdown. In Kansas, it’s still dark, nearing two a.m., so there is truly no way to grasp the full extent of the damage.
As daylight comes early Saturday morning, the photos and videos begin to circulate social media. In the precarious way that tornadoes operate, a series of houses are left standing next to piles of wood that used to be family homes. Mothers and fathers are seen digging through the rubble in attempts to retrieve whatever they can salvage, but mostly, aside from first responders, the suburb looks like a ghost town.
However bad the damage, one thing is clear: it will take years and lots of money to begin the reparation process. Clean up efforts eerily reflect those of the town’s past 1991 tragedy, leaving residents, especially those of the younger generations, feeling helpless. “While the people I know and love are perfectly fine, my community and my city are grieving for what has been lost,” Melton told me. “The worst thing about not being home during a catastrophe is that I feel helpless. I want to go out and help the community and the families affected by the storm, but I can’t right now… because I go to college in a different state.”
This feeling of helplessness is a shared sentiment felt by many of the people I’d spoken to, but most importantly, there was a feeling of hope for what is to come. The community bounced back with such intensity after the last storm, and local small businesses, organisations and individuals are already banding together, planning fundraising events, clean-up days and food/clothing drives.
Above all else, resilience has come from the tragedy. Citizens have already showcased the power of the love that stemmed from the original storm over 31 years ago. The city of Andover has been here before. Plagued by a series of unfortunate events, the town and its values haven’t waivered, even through adversity. They’ve been here before and thrived, and all things point toward the community coming out so much stronger than it came.