Fierce Wind Rips Through Countryside North of Osawatomie

The microburst swept across Bethel Church Road north of Osawatomie like a demon in the dark.
In a matter of seconds, the powerful wind flattened barns, uprooted giant oaks and tore the roofs off two homes near the corner of 311th Street and Bethel Church Road about 11 p.m. Friday – trapping a woman and her daughter inside their home.
“My daughter and I were asleep in bed,” said Kim Billesbach of rural Paola. “It sounded like a sonic boom, and then you could hear the rain falling in the house. It came without any warning.”
Billesbach said at first she thought maybe a tornado had hit the house.
“I didn’t know what had happened. There was glass and pieces of the roof everywhere. And the power was out. I called 9-1-1.”
The Paola Fire Department responded to the call and worked quickly to get Billesbach and her daughter, Hannah, out of harm’s way. The storm had passed almost as quickly as it struck.
“When the firemen left, there were stars overhead,” Billesbach said.
Planks from support beams in the metal barn were lodged in the roof of the house like darts on a corkboard. One large projectile crashed through the kitchen window and embedded itself in the backsplash behind the sink.
Alan Billesbach was on a fishing trip in Nebraska when he got word what had happened to his wife and daughter.
“I rushed back here as fast as I could,” he said.
A gaping hole in the roof dumped water into the family’s dining room. But a china cabinet near the dining room table and a chandelier were unblemished.
“It didn’t move one thing in the china cabinet,” Billesbach said. “I couldn’t believe it.”
More evidence of the freakish wind could be found outside near the collapsed barn and across the metal-strewn lawn.
“Pieces of tin were wrapped around limbs like garland on a Christmas tree,” Kim said.
A 2008 Ford F-250 pickup, which had been in the barn, was pocked with massive dents, and a piece of black plastic covered the smashed out back window. But a 1992 Ford F-150 pickup sitting outside on the north side of the barn didn’t suffer a scratch.
Alan pointed to a heavy cattle-loading chute that had been turned sideways, but lightweight stock tanks and dog kennels nearby were undisturbed. In the distance, the top of a neighbor’s windmill had been sheared off by the fierce wind.
Across the road, June McCoy was sitting in a recliner in the corner of her living room when the storm ripped the roof off her double-wide modular home and scattered it and insulation for hundreds of yards in the field behind her home.
“I didn’t have any warning. It just hit with a loud boom. And then I was instantly soaked by a heavy rain,” McCoy said. “I had just watched the news, and they were talking about 90 mile-an-hour winds at Manhattan and north of Kansas City, but they didn’t say anything about us down here.”
The storm didn’t so much as bend a shingle on the roof over McCoy’s front porch.
“I had to go under my front porch to get out of the rain,” McCoy said. “I fell down a couple of times trying to get out of the house, because the floor was so slippery, but I wasn’t hurt.”
She ran a hand through her white hair.
“I still can’t get all the insulation out of my hair.”
Most of McCoy’s possessions were a total loss.
“The range was filled with water, and all the furniture was damaged. The floor is already warped from all the water.”
Power lines were strung about on the ground. Over the weekend and on Monday morning, her children, grandchildren and siblings were at work trying to clean up the place and salvage what they could. A satellite dish, still intact on the only sliver of roof that didn’t fly away, looked starkly out of place atop her home.
“The place is a total loss. I’ll have to replace it with another double-wide,” said McCoy, who moved into the modular home 33 years ago after her house had burned down in Paola.
“We had just put a new roof on this place last year,” she said. “At least no one was hurt.”
The Billesbachs were counting their blessings as well.
“We didn’t lose any animals, no cattle, bunnies or dogs,” Alan said.
The Billesbachs had just put a new kitchen floor in the home last Thursday.
“I got to enjoy my floor for one day, but it could have been much worse,” Kim said. “No one was hurt. That’s the important thing.”

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Posted by Doug on Aug 19 2010. Filed under News and Updates, Photo Galleries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry