The tornado that ripped through the Merrick neighborhood also claimed the life of a 23-year-old man sitting in the driver’s seat of his 2005 Kia parked along Main Street.
A tornado is seen over the former Columbia Manufacturing Company property in Westfield Wednesday.WEST SPRINGFIELD – A mother died shielding her 15-year-old daughter in a bathtub as their three-story apartment building on Union Street collapsed into rubble during Wednesday’s tornado.
“There is no doubt she saved her daughter,” Police Chief Thomas E. Burke said during a press conference on Union Street Thursday.
He identified the 40-year-old mother as either Angelique or Angelica Guerro. The tornado that ripped through and devastated the Merrick neighborhood also claimed the life of a 23-year-old man sitting in the driver’s seat of his 2005 Kia parked along Main Street at Hill.
Burke said Sergey Livchin of 15 LaBelle St. was pronounced dead at the scene, but that a passenger in his Kia survived after a tree fell on the vehicle. The call came in to police about 4:45 p.m.
Guerro died of asphyxiation caused by compression of the torso, Burke said. Her husband and daughter were taken to Baystate Medical Center in Springfield for treatment, according to him. The daughter suffered lacerations to her legs, the police chief said.
The mother and daughter were in the first-floor apartment of their three-family building in the vicinity of 1687 Union St.
“The third floor is now in the cellar,” Burke said.
The police chief said the husband was able to free himself from the wreckage and call out to neighbors for help. Firefighters were able to free the mother and daughter, Burke said.
The twister also sent 13 people in West Springfield to the hospital, according to Mayor Edward J. Gibson. He said there have been no additional deaths noted Thursday.
Acting Assistant School Superintendent Kevin A. McQuillan said 51 people displaced by the tornado spent Wednesday night at the middle school, which was turned into a shelter. The school official said there is a possibility a second shelter will be established.
There was no damage to public school buildings other than a tree falling at Memorial School, according to McQuillan. However, school was canceled because of the devastation, according to him. Classes will resume Friday, Deputy Fire Chief Robert A. Manchino Jr. said.
People are welcome to bring their pets to the middle school, which has a fenced-in area outside, according to Manchino.
Burke said a 9 p.m. curfew has been set in the Merrick section, one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods. It is a mixture of homes, many multi-family, with businesses and industry as well.
The police chief said the curfew is needed so Department of Public Works employees can clear away trees and other relief work can take place. The situation is made difficult by that fact that many Merrick residents do not speak English and children have been freely roaming the streets, according to Burke.
“We understand the curiosity factor, but this is not a safe place,” Burke said. People outdoors in Merrick after 9 p.m. will be subject to arrest, according to the police chief.
Teams have gone house to house condemning buildings, shutting off gas and electrical services, Manchino said. He was hopeful they would finish their work by night in Merrick, the only neighborhood without power.
“Every pole on the street (Union Street) is down,” Burke said.
Merrick resounded with the buzz of chain saws as a flotilla of crews worked to clear streets that were strewn with branches and, in some cases, uprooted trees.
Union and Merrick streets were hit with considerable damage.
“There are two three-story buildings that are like three feet tall,” Building Commissioner Patrick J. Moore said of Union Street.
Those buildings are located to the west of the offices of state Sen. James T. Welch, D-West Springfield, at 772 Union St. The mayor, Manchino and Burke disseminated information about the situation during a press conference about 2:30 p.m. in front of that office.
Meanwhile, families and neighbors pulled together to help each other clean up around their houses.
At 65 Merrick St., Zinaida Taganova got help from her three daughters and their husbands. The men wielded a chain saw to cut up a huge tree that was felled across the yard, while the woman searched the lawn for shards of glass.
“We are trying to clean up the glass. There is a lot of glass and we have kids,” her daughter, 28-year-old Oksana P. Ruge of 101 River St. said.
Ruge translated for her mother, whose English is limited because she is from the Ukraine.
Taganova had just come home from work Wednesday afternoon and was standing on her porch holding the door open when the tornado barreled down Merrick Street.
“I heard the noises, stuff started flying and I saw a tree fall,” Taganova said.
Debris from buildings across the street torn apart by the wind came flying her way.
“I got scared,” Taganova said. “It was like really fast. It seemed like it was a moment. Then I started shaking. I was in shock and I started crying and I saw people running. Neighbors started running around asking if everyone was okay.”
Scores of people wandered through the Merrick Section of the city Thursday morning with dazed looks on their faces and stories of a fast-moving horror that came out of nowhere.
Much of Main and Union streets remained closed to traffic and side streets were littered with tangles of fallen trees and wires.
Fierce winds pushed a three-family home at 83-85 Bridge St.off its foundation by three or four feet.
“My father saw something in the distance and knew what it was and told us to grab the kids,” said Tiffany Mansfield, who lived on the second floor with her husband and three children. “The house shook a little bit and the windows exploded, the walls were caving in.”
Mansfield and other family members were among the Merrick residents who spent the night at an emergency shelter set up at West Springfield Middle School.
“My Mom’s floor is in the basement, the house is tilted, half the roof is off,” Mansfield said.
“It was bad, I was scared,” said Mansfield’s mother, Lillian Riggs, who also spent the night in the shelter.
David Stoddard, who also lived at 83-85 Bridge St., said he ran upstairs to alert other tenants. “We were still up there when it went through,” he said. “It was scary.”
Stoddard said he had no inkling that the house had been shifted off its foundation until afterwards when he went outside to view the devastation.
One street over, New Bridge Street resident James Gilligan said the wind from the tornado sounded like “chattering teeth,” as he and others took shelter in his basement at 69 New Bridge St.
“In Massachusetts you don’t really expect to see a tornado,” Gilligan said. “You hear the warnings and everyone just brushes it off. But this actually just happened - it’s mayhem.”
A short distance away, an overturned truck could be seen at Latino Foods, 23 New Bridge St. James Vallides, the owner of the business, said things had been slow Wednesday so employees knocked off work early, about 15 minutes before the tornado came through.
“Thank God nobody was in the building,” Vallides said, adding that his building, missing walls, “is totaled.”
The interior of another business on New Bridge Street, Felicano’s Ethnic Food Distribution, was open to the sky.
George Graham, a staff writer for The Republican, contributed to this report.