The Smithville, MS EF-5 Tornado – April 27, 2011

Back in Smithville, stunned residents attempted to find loved ones or free themselves from the debris.  City mayor Greg Kennedy – who had taken shelter underneath a board table with two office workers – dug himself out of the remains of city hall, shocked to see instead of a wooded bustling town, a flat barren wasteland.  However, he immediately sprung into action, helping to set up a triage area as the wounded poured in – some walking, some carried on the backs of doors and ATVs.

There is not much information available on this morbid side and I am grateful for that; it is known that the tornado had not been kind to the dead. Many of the bodies were, unusually, not underneath piles of rubble, but were moved.  Most lay naked, stripped of clothing and hurled long distances. Some took several days to identify, even after they were cleaned of the embedded shrapnel and mud that coated them.  The mayor, Greg Kennedy, used water and cotton rags to clean the faces of four of the dead before the Monroe County coroner arrived and took over.  Even though he had talked to one of them less than two hours ago and had known all of them for years, he could not recognize a single face.  A small shed near the easternmost water tower was where the bodies were stored for a few days until a refrigerated truck was procured, as it had the only door left that they could secure.

The injuries to the living were also ghastly, many shrapnel related; impalement, split skulls, extreme lacerations and others.  There are other heartbreaking stories to tell; I list them not because I take absolutely any pleasure in including these gut wrenching narratives, but because they are an important part of this narrative.  To shove them aside, ignore them because it is the story we do not wish to hear would be doing them and their families a disservice.  And perhaps, people will understand better just how seriously tornadoes need to be taken.

Paul Estis had immediately headed for his parent’s house on Elm Street, where he found his father, Roy, among what was left of his home, still alive but battered with a hole in his stomach.  Paul was given these heartbreaking words after Roy told him to find mama:

“Son, I was holding her in my arms, and she just went up, and I couldn’t hold on.”

Nobly, Roy had sent his eight year old nephew to a storm shelter that day, choosing to remain with his wife of 43 years who was unable to get up at that time.  Ruth Estis was carried by the tornado a long distance, later found dead.  Roy would die the next day in a hospital of his injuries.

Steve Umphress had been on the edge of the core.  To him, the tornado sounded like a simultaneous buzz saw and a thousand pigs squealing. Hiding in an interior bathroom with his spouse of nine weeks, the last thing he remembered as the tornado arrived was a board blasting through the wall like a bullet and the wall collapsing.  When he came to again, crouched on all fours, a horseshoe piece of skin had peeled off his skull and hung over his left eye.  He held it back in place to keep from bleeding out.  Despite the severity of his injury, Steve would survive.  His wife, Barbara, spent 18 days in a coma but would eventually make a full recovery.

The tornado spared many of those who were not sucked into the core. Prompt medical treatment would save more than one life.  There was a man with one hand, Terry Hill, who heard that Smithville needed help and arrived on the scene.  With a prosthetic hook for a hand, he dug out Vickie Clingan from under five feet of debris.  She would never see his face, but he had saved her.  Sadly, her mother, who had been next door, did not survive.

Ann Seales, a town clerk, had been on the opposite side of town from her husband of 52 years when the tornado struck.  They found each other on the highway in the middle of town; house destroyed, but with what is most important.

Josh and Emily Pearson were critically injured but survived.  Austin Jones was less significantly injured and also lived.  Jimmy Cowley, who was thrown in his truck, had his head sewn back up.  For him, life largely returned to normal.  There were others; the fourteen people who had huddled in an underground storm shelter.  The dozen folks who had been given refuge in the cooler.  The people who hid in a bank vault.  The dozens that took shelter in the church.  And the many, many more people who survived in underground storm shelters all throughout Smithville.  Every one of these people survived.  Among the ruin, there was life.