It was Friday, April 26th and I'd just gotten home from work and flipped on the tv when I saw the weather radar and was horrified. Just to the west of me a monstrous storm was wreaking havoc on the small town of Andover Kansas. I grabbed my camera and my dog and jumped in the car in order to take a few pictures, though I had no idea where the tornado might actually be. I headed north and snapped a couple of shots as I was heading out of town.
I continued north and got much closer to the storm, and noticed most of the cattle in the fields were milling around and bawling. My normally calm dog began behaving strangely, becoming agitated and whining incessantly so I finally came to my senses, turned around and went back towards Kellogg. A few miles from Andover the police had the road blocked due to huge powerlines that had fallen across the highway, so I reluctantly decided to return home and watch the storm coverage on television. Over the next few hours I remained glued to the tube, watching footage of the incredible damage and horrible images of injured people and bodies lined up on the curb near Andover road.
I was scheduled to work the next day, so I had to travel nearly 30 miles in a round about fashion to get there. Most of the people I worked with weren't there, and I heard several disturbing rumors about some friends who lived in Andover. Several of us talked to our boss and managed to convince him to let us all go home.
I called my brother and sister and met up with them to survey the storm damage. Andover was still blocked from ordinary traffic, so we went northeast near Towanda and very soon discovered amazing damage produced by the devastating F5 tornado. These are some of the vehicles that people were driving when the tornado crossed I35. Incredibly, all the people were able to abandon their vehicles and were not injured.
This was once a semi cab.
This small truck was completely destroyed, yet amazingly there were several objects which remained in the bed, including a tire iron, several empty oil bottles, jumper cables, as well as the blanket seen in the photo.
Other devastated vehicles.
This was the most amazing thing I saw that day. This car had been hurled from I35 and struck this small tree, almost completely wrapping the car around it, leaving less than a 1 foot gap between the front and rear bumpers. Even more incredible, the tree was broken off at ground level and had been moved nearly a foot from where it had grown, and somehow it still managed to remain upright!
Thankfully, I learned in the next few days that my friends in Andover were safe, although they lost everything they had. They had managed to seek shelter seconds before the tornado hit, surviving unscathed with only the clothes on their backs.
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