TORNADO! The May 31, 1985, Tornado Outbreak: Pennsylvania’s Second Deadliest Natural Disaster
This is an old picture of the hotel. I posted it so everyone could see the peaks. In my story below, Beverly screamed “the peaks are gone”. Actually, the whole building was gone.
It was a weird weather day. It was a hot and humid afternoon. Thunderstorms seemed to be brewing as 5:00 PM approached. I remember it was windy out. We had the doors open in the bar, and the wind kept blowing the door shut. I remember putting a chair against one of the doors to keep the door open.
Janine and I were bartending at the Hotel Shenango in the flats of Wheatland. Weeks before the tornado, my shift was so busy that Albert hired Janine to help me. Janine and I were best friends, and I got her the job.
It was a Friday, and usually, the bar was packed full of people. That night, it was not. There were only around 12 of us in the bar, which was very strange. Normally during the 3 pm to 8 pm hours, workers from Wheatland Tube, Dunbar Asphalt Company, and Yourga Trucking Company came into the bar after their day shift ended.
It was around 5 pm when a well-known policeman came into the bar and told us that the Amish community of Atlantic in Southern Crawford County had been destroyed by a tornado. Atlantic was a good hour away from Wheatland. After he left, I turned on the TV, hoping to see some news about Atlantic getting wiped out by the tornado.
Around 7 pm, the electricity went out. The TV went blank. The cash register would not open. Janine and I kept working and the customers in the bar kept drinking, eating, and having fun. I remember I was making someone french fries. We made them in the microwave. After the tornado, the microwave was found and the french fries were still in the microwave.
All of a sudden, It started hailing outside. Some of the guys in the bar went outside and came back in and threw the hailstones at us. We were all laughing and having fun.
Now, all of this happened at the same time. Albert (the owner) called. At the same time, the guys who were going outside to get hail came in, yelling a tornado was coming. Janine answered the phone. Because the electricity went out, I told Janine to ask Albert how to open the cash drawer manually. Usually, there is a button on the cash drawer to open it manually. I could not find that button. Before Janine had the chance to ask Albert, when she heard the guys yell tornado, she panicked and hung up on Albert.
After Janine hung up on Albert, he called right back, and I ran to answer the phone. I picked up the phone. All of a sudden, the building started to come down on me. Cement blocks were falling on us. All Albert could hear was me screaming, “Help Me Albert,” and then the phone disconnected.
We had no clue the tornado was an F5, 300 miles an hour wind, a mile wide.
Albert had no clue what was happening but he knew he had to come to Wheatland. He lived around a half hour away. He didn’t know if he should leave his family at home or bring them with him. He put them in his car and headed to Wheatland. The peaks of the hotel were visible from the main street that ran through Wheatland. Beverly, Albert’s wife told me when they got to Wheatland and they were on the main road, she started to scream to Albert that the peaks of the hotel were gone.
The hotel was a three-story building. There was not a basement. Even if there was a basement, none of us would have had time to go to the basement. People say a tornado sounds like a train coming. I didn’t hear a train sound. The two top stories had to blow into the air. If the whole building came down on us, we would not be here to tell our story. Thankfully, Janine pulled me down on the floor. The wind was picking me up and Janine was holding onto my arms so tight that I had black and blue fingerprints on my arms after the tornado ended. The beer cooler broke loose and fell on us, which pushed me back on the ground, on top of Janine. Immediately, the beer cooler blew off of us. We were on the floor behind the bar, but the bar blew away. The pop canisters next to us, one at a time flew away. I saw a chunk of glass blow by me in what seemed to be slow motion.
I was screaming, “We are going to die”. Janine was screaming prayers to God. Thankfully, God listened to Janine. I remember seeing bright lights and I thought the bright lights were our near-death experience. It was lightning in the eye of the tornado.
Now, mind you, when the tornado was past us, we could see the sky. The hotel was gone. Nothing was standing higher than my waist.
During the tornado, a tree blew between Janine and me. I got up and pulled the tree off of Janine. We were both covered in dirt from head to toe. I had to pull Janine out of the dirt. I remember her shoes got stuck in the dirt. Once I got her out of the dirt, we looked up and saw the tornado about a mile or two away bouncing around. We were scared the tornado was going to come back toward us. We started to run. We were in shock.
The power lines were snapping and sparking. The gas lines were spewing out natural gas. We thought the lines would explode so we started running. There was a car on the railroad track and a lady was in the car. Her face was so bloody we could not tell who she was. She was screaming that her four children got blown out of the car. Janine and I started to run to the kids that were lying on the ground. We could only find three of them and they were lying on the ground and not moving.
Immediately, the National Guard was running down many of the roads that led into the flats of Wheatland. I could not believe how quickly they showed up. I started to scream at the National Guard to come to where I was and help these children.
We only found three of the children. A few days after the tornado, I heard the fourth child was blown a few blocks away and sad to say, was killed by the tornado.
When the National Guard got to us, and started to take care of the three little children, it dawned on Janine and I that we had left people in the hotel, so we ran back to the hotel to help the people get out. One lady (Betty) was behind the Juke Box. We pulled it off of her. One of the guys was in the ladies’ room, and he opened the door and came out limping. Everyone, except for Mike Kurpe got out. Unfortunately, Mike did not survive the tornado. From what I heard, we would not have been able to save him.
Janine and I were covered with dirt. Our hair was so covered with dirt, it was sticking out. I wish I had a picture. There was an asphalt company in Wheatland. I still have pieces of asphalt embedded in my head. Nothing on our bodies was broken, but we had cuts and we were bloody. I can’t even describe what we looked like.
I remember trying to get into damaged buildings to see if I could use a phone to call my family to let them know I was still alive. Every phone I picked up had a dial tone but as soon as I picked up the phone and started to dial my home’s number, the phone went dead.
My father was trying to get to Wheatland. He had heard there was a tornado. He was worried about me. Traffic was stalled, and he could only get so far into Wheatland. My cousin Mike was leaving Wheatland and saw my dad and told my dad I was dead. My dad believed him and turned around and went home. My cousin assumed that no one made it out alive.
A lady named Mrs. Simonic called my sister and told her I was alive, hurt, and walking the streets of Wheatland. I do not know who Mrs. Simonic was, but I was glad she was able to contact my family and let them know I was still alive. When my father got home, my sister ran out of the house to tell him I was alive. My father was sitting in the car trying to think of how to tell my sister I was dead.
My mom was playing golf. The tornado went over the golf course, but it was high and didn’t touch the ground. Everyone at the golf course was safe. My mother had to drive through Wheatland to get home. Traffic was stopped so she turned around. My mother’s friend, Liz, lived right outside of Wheatland. She lived on the road my mother had to take to go home, so she stopped at Liz’s house and asked Liz if she knew why the traffic was stopped. Liz told my mom that Wheatland was destroyed. My mother knew I was working, and she feared I was dead. My mother was 59 years old at that time.
Because of traffic backup, she could only drive so far down the road. She got as far as she could so she parked the car and started to run to get to the hotel. The National Guard was at each entrance making sure people did not try to get into Wheatland. The National Guard tried to stop my mother. They grabbed her to stop her from going into the damaged area. She threw all three of the men off of her. She yelled her daughter was in Wheatland. All they could do was tell her to be careful. The electric lines were still snapping, and gas was still spewing.
My mother got to what was left of the hotel. She was standing on the rubble screaming my name. Someone told her I got out around 15 minutes ago. I’m not sure what building this picture was taken of, but this is what the hotel looked like after the tornado.
As Janine and I were walking out of Wheatland, people were running into Wheatland. They were stopping us and asking if we knew if the people who lived on the top two floors of the hotel were home when the tornado destroyed the hotel. We didn’t know. They were asking us who was in the bar with us. We told them what we could. I remember some people who stopped us had paper and pens and were writing down what we said about who we knew were in the hotel. Being in shock, we did the best we could.
When we got to the top of the flats, some friends of Janine saw us and picked us up. Their car kept stalling, and it was annoying me. I remember getting out of their car. I was going to walk back into the flats of Wheatland. To this day, I do not know why I wanted to go back into the destroyed area where electricity lines were snapping on the ground.
As I was walking alone, a family driving by me saw me walking alone and stopped to help me. It was a husband and wife and their children. The husband and wife were in the front seat and they had two young children in the back seat. They asked me to get in. I got in the back seat and I asked them if they would take me back down into the flats. I remember not wanting to get their car dirty so I sat at the very end of the seat. They said yes they would take me back into Wheatland, but they were driving the opposite way. They were taking me to the hospital. I did not want to go to the hospital. My Aunt Mary lived very close to the hospital. I asked to be taken to my Aunt Mary’s. They took me to my Aunt Mary’s house. Then my Aunt Mary took me to the hospital.
A lot of the people at the hospital were severely hurt. We were all in the emergency area. Families and friends were in the waiting area. The workers would come into the ER and call our names and tell us our families were in the waiting area. My family was in the waiting area. I was in a hospital gown. I went out to find my family and asked them to get me out of there. They took me home.
Five friends of mine didn’t make it. I knew them from working at the bar. Tony, an elderly man, died a few days later from a brain injury. Herb, an elderly man, was sleeping in his home on the second floor and I heard he got blown out of his second floor. He passed away in the hospital. Bobby, an invalid in a wheelchair, was in his home and he didn’t make it. David, the mailman was umpiring a Little League game down the road from the Hotel. He died saving two children.
It was very sad that someone in the bar with us did not make it. Mike, who was in the bar with me, tragically had two walls fall on him. Prior to the torado, Mike came into the hotel bar every day after work. He worked at Dunbar Asphalt. He drank IC Light beer. I remember one night he came in and asked for an Iron City Light. I told him we didn’t have Iron City Light. We laughed when he told me it was IC Light. Mike was a good friend. Prior to the tornado, when Mike came into the bar after work, he would never stay longer than a half hour. That evening for some reason, I will never know why, he stayed. When we all heard the tornado was coming, he was the only one who ran to the front of the hotel where the pool table was. The rest of us stayed in the bar area.
My car got damaged. Not only did I lose my car, I lost my job. And worst of all, I lost friends.
This coming May will be a 40th anniversary. I remember everything that happened like it was yesterday. I remember cement blocks falling on me. I remember screaming in the phone, “help me Albert”. I can still picture me and Janine holding onto each other. I can still picture power lines snapping and gas lines spewing natural gas. I can still remember the little kids lying on the train tracks.
For weeks after the tornado, every time I would go into a restaurant, bar or store where people knew me, they would run up to me and hug me and tell me how glad they were that I lived.
The tornado may have passed, but its lessons remain—resilience, gratitude, and the unshakable truth that every sunrise is a second chance.
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