In the wake of the June 1 storms that ravaged the region, communities immediately began work to help residents and businesses recover.
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The Republican | Michael S. Gordon06.14.2011 | SPRINGFIELD - Robbie D. Ober, owner of Robbie's Auto and Truck Repair on East Columbus Avenue in Springfield, stands in front of his business that was damaged by the tornado.Business was good at Robbie’s Auto and Truck Repair on June 1.
All day, customers were showing up for inspection stickers or routine repairs at the garage and parking lot on East Columbus Avenue in Springfield, making it one of the best days in years.
Until 4:32 p.m., that is.
Until a funnel cloud rose over the Connecticut River and slammed into Robbie’s garage and office – shattering windows, peeling off part of the roof and flinging furniture, office supplies and tools across the South End neighborhood.
In a few harrowing seconds, a dozen vehicles were rammed together in the parking lot and two employees were nearly decapitated when a billboard sliced through the garage.
“It was like a guillotine,” recalls owner Robbie D. Ober, who opened his business 33 years ago. “We’re lucky somebody wasn’t killed.”
More than two weeks after tornadoes unleashed death and destruction across Hampden and Worcester counties, survivors across the region are still grappling with the meaning and consequences of the freak twisters.
In two hours on June 1, three tornadoes rolled across Western Massachusetts, pummeling hundreds of homes and businesses along their paths.
Touching down in Westfield at 4:15 p.m., the first storm carved a half-mile-wide track for 39 miles to Charlton and wreaked the majority of the damage; two smaller twisters touched down later in Wilbraham and Brimfield.
In between, the small town of Monson was left nearly unrecognizable, but its citizens toiled help each other and start down a long path of recovery.
Before the last storm fizzled out, a huge relief and recovery effort was taking shape across the region, with everyone from National Guard soldiers and the Pioneer Valley Chapter of the American Red Cross to Big Y World Class Supermarkets and groups of elementary-school children pitching in to help.
Still, given the scope and often spectacular nature of the damage, the recovery will test public and private agencies in the Greater Springfield region for many months to come. Some estimates are that the regional rebuilding effort could take 18 to 24 months.
A legion of local, state and federal leaders, from U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal, D-Springfield, and U.S. Sens. John F. Kerry and Scott Brown to Gov. Deval Patrick and Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno, pressed to have a federal disaster order signed by President Barack H. Obama. The order, signed on June 15, clears the way for federal disaster assistance to cities and towns, residents and businesses.
Already, the costs are staggering – nearly $4 million for the first five days in Springfield, for example – and the full extent of the damage is still emerging.
As of June 7, initial insurance claims filed to cover 5,000 homes tallied about $90 million, and an official with the state Emergency Management Agency on June 10 said tornado damage to infrastructure plus the costs for overtime and materials associated with the cleanup totals $25 million.
In all, three deaths, two in West Springfield, and one in Brimfield, were attributed directly to the tornadoes. ![Gallery preview]()
In Monson, 51 homes were destroyed and another 67 were heavily damaged, according to ongoing damage surveys.
In Brimfield, 39 homes had been declared uninhabitable in the first week, and 18 more were still not accessible enough for a full inspection; less serious damage was reported in 89 homes.
In Wilbraham, 234 homes were damaged. Of those, 13 have been deemed unsafe for occupancy, and in Westfield, more than 250 homes were damaged.
After striking Westfield, the first of the tornadoes ripped through West Springfield’s Merrick neighborhood, tearing up homes and businesses in its path. One man was killed when a tree topped onto his car on Main Street, and in a tenement nearby, a woman died as she shielded her daughter in a bathtub while her family’s apartment house collapsed around them.
In Springfield, 40 buildings have been demolished and 200 condemned; at an emergency shelter at the MassMutual Center, 230 people remained homeless a week into the recovery effort and more than 100 people called the shelter home two weeks after the storm.
In the minutes after the tornado touched down in Springfield, staff at the MassMutual Center welcomed children from a daycare center and others who sought refuge from the wrath of the weather; by nightfall, the center had established the shelter at the same time it was playing host to the Minnechaug Regional High School prom.
Baystate Health and Sisters of Providence health systems put their disaster-response teams into full throttle to prepare for possible victims as soon as tornado warnings were broadcast. By the end of the night, Mercy Medical Center had treated 25 patients and Baystate Medical Center had admitted 10 trauma patients and treated 15 others with lesser injuries.
“As I realized the speed and scale of the disaster that was befalling Springfield and its neighboring communities, my first reaction was concern that an enormous number of people were seriously hurt,” said Baystate president Mark Tolosky. “As our community’s level 1 trauma center, Baystate Medical Center trains constantly for disasters like this, and we are accustomed to caring for the most seriously ill and injured patients.”
“Our clinical leadership and staff across the spectrum of services at Baystate Health responded magnificently,” Tolosky added. “From trauma surgeons and nurses on the front lines to home-infusion personnel navigating downed power lines and rubble to ensure uninterrupted service to homebound patients in the affected communities, our team was efficient, compassionate, calm and graceful.”
At the peak of the tornado, more than 42,000 households and businesses had lost power. Nearly all power was restored by noon on June 4, with the exception of homes and businesses which were badly damaged, said Amy Zorich, spokeswoman for National Grid.
“The damage from these storms was unprecedented in our service territory,” said Peter Clarke, Western Massachusetts Electric Co. president and chief operating officer. “Our customers’ safety and comfort are of paramount importance to us and we used every available resource to get the power back on as quickly and safely as possible.”
Those resources included some 150 crews from across New England who had to replace 106,000 feet of cable, 185 utility poles and 225 new transformers in the storms’ wake.
“Our employees and crews from neighboring utilities and contractors worked tirelessly to rebuild the severely-damaged electric system and restore service to our customers in just over three days, an accomplishment that would not have been possible without the cooperation and support of the city and town administrations and the local and state public safety organizations,” Clarke said.
National Grid brought in several hundred crews from across the region and New York to address repairs to its system, where 400 utility poles and 100 transformers had to be repaired or replaced, Zorich said.
For John B. Bruschi, who has witnessed his share of New England weather since opening Albano’s Market in Springfield’s South End in 1942, the destruction is difficult to fathom.
“We’ve been here a long time,” said Bruschi, whose East Columbus Avenue business was spared by the storms, “but, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Like others in his neighborhood, the market owner had no idea a big storm was brewing, much less a tornado. Slicing lemons in the back room, Bruschi glanced out the window and noticed his wife Filomena’s SUV was behaving oddly.
“It was going up and down, like it was trying to levitate,” he said. “You just don’t see that in a regular storm.”
Moments later, the storm skipped over the market, but plowed into the nearby South End Community Center and businesses on Main Street.
Nobody coming into the market has talked about much of anything since, Bruschi said. “Everybody’s got a story,” he said. ![Gallery preview]()
For all their ferocity, the June 1 storms were not Greater Springfield’s worst natural disaster. That distinction belongs to the flood of 1936, which kept Springfield’s North and South ends submerged for days, and left 77,000 homeless from Chicopee to Greenfield.
In 1938, a fast-moving hurricane killed six and destroyed 19 bridges and dams and thousands of miles of electrical and telephone lines.
Still, no storm inflicted more damage in Greater Springfield in a shorter time than the trio of June 1 twisters.
At a late-night press conference in Springfield on the day the tornadoes struck, the governor declared a state of emergency and promised to do everything possible to help victims and speed the recovery.
Appearing with Patrick and Sarno, senator Kerry said the tornadoes were likely a “once-in-a-hundred-years weather event.” Sarno pleaded for patience, and promised to leave no resource untapped, no dollar unspent to aid the recovery.
Two days later, the National Weather Service confirmed what many suspected: the storm was one of the strongest ever recorded in Massachusetts, with wind speeds estimated at 136 to 165 mph.
During a tour to assess the damage, Neal said he had difficulty recognizing streets which he had traveled first as a boy growing up in the city and later during his tenure as mayor from 1984 until 1989.
“I know every obscure street. I knew every alleyway in the city. And, I couldn’t orient myself in the neighborhood. There were no trees left,” he said.
Only one tornado – a mile-wide twister that pummeled Worcester and surrounding towns in 1953, killing 94 people and leaving 10,000 homeless – packed stronger winds.
Beyond their sheer power, the storms struck with stunning caprice – barely rippling the trees in one neighborhood, while turning another into a logging camp.
In Westfield, Thomas W. Humphrey watched the storm jump over his 84 Cardinal Lane home, dumping a 20-foot section of steel roof from nearby Munger Hill School into his backyard swimming pool.
At the MacDuffie School in Springfield, the first tornado tore into a slate roof, spraying thousands of jagged shards toward homes on Central Street.
“They were like Chinese stars,” said Springfield building commissioner Steven Desilets, referring to the sharp-pointed weapons. “It’s amazing that more people weren’t hurt.”
In the city’s Sixteen Acres neighborhood, the storm barely missed the Macedonia Church of God in Christ, sparing the congregation its third rebuilding effort in three years. To protest Barack Obama’s election as president, arsonists torched the black congregation’s church on Nov. 5, 2008, while it was under construction.
Rebuilding began in 2009, with reopening scheduled for this summer. The twister’s path crossed Tinkham Road, several hundred yards from the chapel’s construction site.
A week later, the storm’s impact seemed no less surreal in Springfield’s South End, juxtaposing the familiar with the strange.
At 3 p.m. on June 8, the chimes at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church began playing as a giant demolition crane tore away parts of a building a block away on Main Street.
At the Alfred G. Zanetti school playground, the jungle gym was surrounded by a jungle of broken trees.
A block away, a National Guardsman walked back to his patrol vehicle, carrying two iced coffees from Dunkin’ Donuts.
“It looked like a disaster area, now it looks like a war zone,” said Leo Daniele, owner of LaFiorentina bakery, who had nothing but praise for disaster recovery efforts.
The Main Street bakery’s windows were shattered during the tornado, but it was back in business 2½ days later.
Dozens of politicians and government officials have passed through the South End in the past week, but Sarno – a former director of the South End Community Center who championed a $3.8 million neighborhood revitalization completed last year – has come by every day, Daniele said.
“This has really hit him. You can see it in his face,” Danielle said.
Another South End landmark, the Red Rose Pizzeria, reopened a week after the tornado. Like LaFiorentina, the restaurant escaped serious damage, but was cut off from traffic due to the storm cleanup.
Owner Antonio M. Caputo said the staff could see the funnel cloud approaching through the restaurant’s back door. “It sounded like a 747,” Caputo recalled. “Nobody expected anything like that.”
The restaurant’s roof suffered minor damage, but the neighboring South End Community Center lost half its roof.
“I never really paid attention to tornado warnings before this,” Caputo said. “I will now.”
At Robbie’s, a court employee stopped on June 8 to thank mechanic Step D. Stepanian for giving her shelter in the garage as the funnel cloud approached.
“She put her arms around me, and just started crying,” he recalled in the office with Ober.
It was 4:30 p.m., a week later.
The office was dark, with a plywood window blocking the sun; a lamp cast shadows on the bare walls. “It’s our dungeon,” Stepanian joked.
Not everything got swallowed up by the funnel cloud – a souvenir set of deer antlers, for example, and “Hank,” the Hank Williams II puppet – survived and have been stored in a back room. And, people have been bringing in other items – a hunting magazine, a piece of the roof, a picture of Ober’s wife, Sharon.
Every visit helps, Ober said.
“So many people have been coming in here hugging me and saying: ‘I’m so glad you’re OK.’ It’s unbelievable” said Ober, whose customers include lawyers, judges and court personnel from the nearby Hampden Hall of Justice.
“I can’t say enough about how gracious everybody has been. I really can’t,” he added.
