The Topeka Tornado of 1966

this week marks the fiftieth anniversary of the nineteen sixty six to teach a tornado i'm kate mcintyre and today on katie are present will look back at june eighth nineteen sixty six and the tornado that killed sixteen people and injured hundreds the ef five tornado caused one hundred million dollars in property damage in today's dollars that would be about seven hundred forty million making the topeka tornado one of the most destructive in kansas history later this hour we'll hear from veteran broadcaster bill curtis who was on the air for twenty four hours straight at topeka television station debbie i be debbie you during and after the tornado his dire warning for god's sake take cover is widely credited with saving the lives of many topekans as the tornado passed through the city the first time an unfair author of handheld followed with is a gripping account of the nineteen sixty six fifty two tornadoes but this helped june eighth nineteen sixty

six many topekans bullied their city was impervious to tornadoes why was that there was an indian legend that claimed or suggested that the hill on the southwest edge of the city we protect the town from tornadoes burnett's man is a man of the hill in the legend was that when the armenians were moved to kansas sparked the indian removal act making thirty a tornado hit their village killed many of the young indians and they were buried on this show and supposedly the great spirit agreed to protect the region from tornadoes in the future as long as these graves were not disturbed however in nineteen sixty the city build a primary and on water storage tank on the side of britain's man in that cause some too morey of it as it happened the tornado and sixty six came right over the top of the man an interpreter over their watertown

so you called a coincidence or karma on earth back in the nineteen sixties it was still the very early days of tornado forecasting and in fact in your book and how followed with it you say that meteorologist really didn't want older people about tornadoes tell us about sort of the culture of meteorology at the time yeah this is something i had no idea about until i got into this but in the eighteen eighties there was a year an individual in the us signal corps named john parr family who had done a lot of research about tornadoes studied their damage gone out and visited a number of tornado events in fact his way to rate the damage was very much like the fed could do to scale which would come in almost a hundred years later but done really did this work in and was supported for time but at some point a decision was made to you this could pull the rug out from under him and he started to do preliminary for tornado forecasts

and the powers that be in the you know national weather bureau which was actually part of the us army signal corps at that time decided that this was information that the public probably didn't need the reason was that you know tornado watches and warnings would turn basically cause panic that they would disrupt commerce and because it was so difficult to do these signal corps would look poorly if they were wrong so they instituted a ban on the word bird tornado and tornado forecasting and unfortunately that lasted for close to sixty years and was only in nineteen fifty two that the un now independent national weather bureau begin to orchestral manoeuvres and only after a great deal of pressure from republican politicians so keeping all that in mind tell us about the role that richard garrett played in the topeka tornado yeah he was the meteorologist in charge of the typical office of the

national weather bureau and he came to topeka nineteen forty nine he was a native kansan he did he was a veteran with the weather bureau had been in a lot of different cities are different climates but when he got here soon after the the ban was lifted on tornado forecasting and garrett set to work making topeka is tornado preparedness as sophisticated as attorneys the number of tools or to greece to do that he established volunteer spotter networks are we going to watch for the tornadoes it established communications between the national weather bureau and to your law enforcement and media and he develop public awareness brought most importantly good about what to do when a tornado was coming he also essentially commandeered the civil defense sirens there are nineteen of them in speaker forbes air force base was

a strip search based nuclear weapons nick your missiles out in the countryside around to become so it was a target so they lose ninety sirens and he essentially said you know the chances of getting a tornado are a lot stronger than a russian missile attacks so we're worried he is the use for tornado warnings so he did a whole range of different things a lot different areas to prepare the city was as if well i was prepared for worse case scenario and unfortunately all that transpired on june eighth nineteen sixty six on air take us back to that day and how the events of the day unfolded started as organ cool rainy day foggy and there was a big low pressure system within our self what's up with cancer starts at

around four court that date in fact that issued a tornado watch about two in the morning because i saw the slow moving towards the city and there was also a warm front coming north camden straight up front oklahoma and i knew that those two air masses collided that was likely there would be severe weather but they was gonna overcast and drizzly an income braden tornado like really until law for clock your gas burned off again very hot and very humid in tone the storms begin to develop west of topeka soon after that though the sparse course deployed as was part of the program in topeka several to brits now own insurer before seven o'clock the formal drug other clouds south of dover kansas about fifty miles southwest of topeka cam interesting way the un's blue sky behind it was clear so was on the backside of a super cell that had come through that rain drenched really you know ahead of the tornado and then

clinton often and the final dropping them it was spotted and reported to the national weather bureau office via c be awkward spotters police we saw so did have a way was up there to the call that in and it was moving towards burnett's now in turn the sirens went off but they get seven old too pm now the tornado came over burnett's man about seven fourteen so there was you know ten minutes or so the blow but more now before it hit the southwest edge of the city whenever people that with john burnett's mound at the time was rick douglas radio station that you are un tough about wreck well he was he was a disc jockey well known speaker whose nineteen years old he was ayala it ran they had they took their severe

weather are spotting responsibilities very seriously alerting the public and he was driving the renminbi or which was kind of a storm chaser unit and he was sent to the nets now mckibben on the storm as it was coming in this is before the tornado had been spotted and so he made the drive up the winding road to the top of burnett's man and by that point the other spotters that had initially identify the tornado much on my mom and day about the way head have left the area so the us got to the top he said it was like a buzz brown mystique and really see anything and then he saw offense go climb by in one of his colleagues he was down on the ballot and wesson rigidity that are around a very honest those tornadoes can write so he saw around him initially realize what i was looking at was this half mile wide fall on the ground and so he headed down prince mohammed and i wrote a speech grab them i convinced are broadcasting live in just said there you know this

issue just come into self was part of the city if you're if you're anywhere around here you need to cover a noun that downed impressive for seventy engage bailout tried to get up under the bridge which is work officer hathaway and several others had taken refuge lost his balance and was grabbed by the tornado but because by now to come up over the mountain was women across four seventy and they carried him about it a hundred yards for dropping when he said that when he looked up and saw your pontiac bonneville with its doors flapped and like the wings of a goal to slowly drifting on the backs of the tornado headed east but imagine it was quite a sight another broadcaster associated for all time with the nineteen sixty six tornado is of course bill kurtis and we'll hear from bill kurtis later on this hour but tell us about the role he played as the events transpired curtis

was all at the wheel we don't really only tv station in topeka and it had received word that the tornado was was common and had passed that on to people he was now and him from the camera it always told is like you know this is really serious on getting calls an award but braun was now he was stuck in front of a camera after came over bratz man he was handed a note that said a tornado just destroyed the year the embassy apartments and he can't he said he could count on in his mind gage the trajectory was it was headed towards washburn and towards where his wife and daughter were in so we say discount afraid didn't know what to do or say that would convey the gravity and danger of the moment and so on the sale will start crying but the nie does rallied into just said you know for god's sake to cover a nacho maybe doesn't seem like that

big a deal now but at the time it was very much a departure from what and how broadcasters typically spoke to the public and i think it made them personally drove that he crossed the threshold and certainly you know that you know soldiers grab and people buy go through the tv and say you know this is really got a good get to safety and it definitely a lot of people's attention about something that he did subsequent to that has not really been reported is that he basically gave a running play by play as a tram and deeper into the city and a number of people i talked to said you know that was the key information that they needed when they are in the present the tornado was at washburn or that it was approaching downtown bozeman through local and they acted on that so he put a roll of their import more and saving our lives that day but it was a combined effort he would've had those reports of a one for the euro

courage of the people long for sloan citizens are out there following this information and a deputy devin real time basically so that he could in turn give it to the public if you walk through the campus of washburn university today you would never guess that it had been the scene of so much destruction in the nineteen sixty six tornado butter talk about the effect that the tornado had on the lush green campus you know if you if you were clearly did you know it would probably think that there was no way this institution whatever subpar because it was basically destroyed because the vast majority of buildings were wrecked all the beautiful old stone buildings were blown out it was a mess i'm in a destroyed hundreds of trees on campus in durham i think there was a lot of people are putting washburn stunned but they are not the people are in a fortune leaned into there was very fortuitous that in the spring of nineteen

sixty six the border of washburn that board of trustees i guess had made the decision to change the way the building was unsure and they essentially are barkley replacement policy as opposed to the pro rated are amateurs value of the buildings the construction costs so what that allowed them to do was go out and build a brand new campus and that's exactly what they did they brought in trailers to get back up and running by the fall but over the course of an accord on next twenty years there was a building boom then and there gradually replaced all that have been lost are with fillings and were certainly newer you know are maybe not quite the character that those old stone buildings have that but the institution thirty eight survived and continues to thrive today an answer it's pretty amazing when you look at those voters and something else about was when there was i think there was at least three other people on campus that night and

tom in the numbers serious injuries were no less than twenty and no one was killed in that in and of itself is as amazing and that's really there the pun will take away from that beat a tornado that you had an f five go eight miles through the city and yet only sixteen people lost their lives in that as far as i can determine and certainly it's the opinion of others at that sad to be directly to the work that richard gere had done in preparing the city not only its warnings but the population so that they knew what to do in danger threatened and they do and part of it is yes dumb luck in a way been done tours i understand it that was rinsed commencement had a richly then scheduled for jews in a year that he was earlier that in the spring i think maybe at the end of the spring semester early early spring semester they had initially canceled it in for the main engine eight and it would've been a more

ball the football stadium which was going to walk right over but gun owner no cellar tune that there was two ten thousand people in that for boston one thing that was going on on the western campus the night of june eight was a music recital vase about that there was forty people there twenty students or fifteen students and parents and grandparents and religious it was and you know a music teacher art and his wife had been giving lessons so they gathered and started about seven o'clock i'd just gotten underway in the magical chapel which was the music building and they just began the sirens went off and mr snider of the league's nine was long said you know the stars are gone off we need to go downstairs and may we can continue down there so again they went down and he initially went to the southwest

corner of the building and it because you want to keep your salt on it and because of their instruments were performers were coming but generally well gallo riff on appeal and realize that it was badly out of tune so some of this won't work without a coach somewhere else i went to another room and then piano too was out of tune if i went to his practice studio in town for joy the piano work there so they brought cheers and so they were in that room and not ten minutes later when the tornado made a direct hit on the chapel and it was chaos and it was scary and the number people were hurt none seriously but really they're the miracle of that of that was that the room that that initially gone to in the room that they were supposed to go to by virtue of our you know tornado safety doctor in the southwest corner was buried a second for collapse and there was tons of our rock stoner tumors so has a good chance of song

it's not all these people would've been killed but for that to be you know quirky the fact that the pill was on the tune of it was a little bit in a room and the thing with byner man anchor he's the author of and how followed with that an account of the nineteen sixty six topeka tornado fighter when you started working on this book forty years after the tornado had gone through topeka were you surprised by how much detail people remember about that evening yeah you know for a lot of them it was just like yesterday the experience a traumatic event and i think there's you know one or two ways you can deal with it you can remember every excruciating detail or you can basically blank it out and sometimes it's a little bit of both and people were you know they remember the smells and the sounds and the conversations so i've had people say will manage you make this seem so

alive even though it's so long ago and any answers it was the people that were drawn to the story is you know i just recorded their stories and and wrote them up and jo anne something's exist outside of time memories calm emotions they don't know a statute of limitations and so when people begin to think again about what they've gone through all the sudden it became very vivid and they're conveying things to me that perhaps they hadn't talked about in a long long time and so fortunate my tape recorder was going on just tried to get all that detail down and then get in a way that was accurate in terms of their experience each have two literally dozens of survivors of that peak a tornado in writing this by either one or two people that really stood out in your mind and they they all do i mean i don't know i was what i expected when i started in terms of power

what the impact of this would be on me but i quickly realized that that this is this is heavy this is not some great adventure this was life and death and you know it was forty years ago for these people it was it said just as real as yesterday so i don't know if it was because i tape recorder of those interviews and transcribed those interviews through the transcriptions and then wrote an angry buys it and polish it but it feels like to us at some level like i went through all those experiences with these people oh you know i had to basically channel what happened and then to get a down paper so the result is i think of these experiences a lot even now you know you know it's been three four years since they ended the people on and why you're so since i finish a book but you know they're just so so scary thought a

little girl then her mom was pacing the house looking out the window and they're watching tv and running your mom runs into the bathroom and gets are dead he runs out and grab his glasses and accept the one that says c'mon girls and lift up the bed and sticks them under the bed and she said that she heard the roar and then the sunlight course that was still a shining after the bombs from a passport before the tournament the tornado started to get in front of the sun and it just went dark as the war this enormous roar drew closer and then the next thing you know the house just blew up and she's lying in the mud by this lab but she told me and her mother told me that something that you never know when a girl is alive that as it was happening the wind picked her up she just eight years old and and when was taken or entered and reached up and grabbed are and just held there against

women and managed to save her but you know that's pretty intense and a couple guys watched it from the tenth or the santa fe office building and come across a man moves straightforward towards them they could markets progress by the transformers clone but i've been up there on that level in the downtime those and try to envision what it was like to watch it the income snow towards women and it went straight at them in fact it got to that bill in and sucked the windows out and the power went out all the papers go find a ram for their lives and the city turned to look into his saw this you know hundred euro cottonwood tree right by the window a horizontal this is the tenth floor killing scores of gestures traditions george rediscovering but by the window and then slowly just north but some of things that people saw and felt now and emotions that they experienced it so

it's heavy speaking of emotions that one would feel when you see a tornado coming year direction i wish they'd kept track of the number of times i read the word mesmerized people were mesmerized by the sight of the approaching tornado have you read an excerpt from your book and it's the story of patricia galbreath several miles to sell peace twenty six year old patricia douglas stood on high ground in her front yard and watch the tornado chewed through the city the tunnel was wide and black and brilliantly backlit by the slanting raise the dying afternoon sun pieces of metal and glass suspended in the twister caught the light into shards richard clarke thousand diamonds against the swirling dark man never had galbraith beheld a more breathtaking sight it looks like an angry god she thought for god's sake that you've got to come inside it was her husband jim he stood near the house gesturing wildly

with one arm holding their one year old daughter in the other frantic with tory the couple's three other children already were in the basement but that did not come she could not she was mesmerized by the tornadoes terrible majesty it was as if the final was casting a spell that hamid karzai who dared look upon fortune with a twist to continue on a path perpendicular to gab are in the danger subsided quote there was something extremely seductive about galbraith said forty years later that the tornado would've called my name i would have gone to that just sends chills down my spine gets votes for this growing good comic a big now you see some this video and you can understand because you just don't see that every day and you just don't see that on they're very graceful and they're very powerful and they're very you know fluid you know and

then eventually in smaller school don't get transferred and if it looks like it's not moving or getting bigger that means as coming straight at you and you need to get out of your butt i think i don't think it's i mean i lived in the same way to you just you don't see in our five every day and you probably were trying capture him on as long as you can but no not they're not the brightest thing to do and again it's natural and i probably would've myself i need to get out of there before it gets too close because it's our judge the distances and the speed and then from all the sudden sonia and it's too late and is not on how many of these fatalities were the result of that because you know looked at low debate but you know how far away is i didn't do it i've got to ask you about the title of the third and how followed with a year and want to steal over the title of the famous

photo inserts a couple journal did later and sixty six the davis guy fell to those are parents that nail it but then i thought you know that's coming week tonight from opposite moment was that the liberty memorial you can sit and they have been parked embers from a with the target then there's also on the norse on this is huge i found with a freezer both suck a sculpture against the wall in a song that quote from the book revelations biggest chapter six verse came in and looked and behold the pale horse inn the name that settlement was death and hell fallen within words pretty spooky in that their camera captures the motion and it and it was white it was pale come in across towards berlin snow

that spider man in there but there of and health followed with that a gripping account of the nineteen sixty six topeka tornado water manager will be in to peak of this wednesday june eighth to recall the events of fifty years ago he's giving a talk sponsored by the topeka chamber of commerce which will be held at the offices of the topeka capital journal i'm j mcintyre you're listening to k pr presents on kansas public radio coming up broadcaster bill curtis remembers the events of june eighth nineteen sixty six but first an account at the topeka tornado from a good friend of mine kathy tilden was seven years old living just north of washburn university in nineteen sixty six that evening she was home with their brothers her cousins and her and when the tornado hit one of my cousins had reps dares to close the windows because it was starting to rain and i remember the windows just breaking as she was

closing the windows so she ran down and we all went into the basement we were sitting on the steers of the basement kind of huddled together in a gray up and my aunt and other children and i remember i was at an angle where i could actually see up the stairs and i remember seeing the door open chat open chat and there are seeing their refrigerator going across the rim in and at the time we were all praying on end then daylight they would do or just in the stairwell we let that the militias daylight and because then at that point then the roof was taken off in the walls and it was just sky water was coming down into the basement because so many pipes get broken in a tornado that and we need to get out of the basement so we came upstairs were walking after the houses carefully as possible because of the children are barefoot and them we walked pass a

glass and of a glass partition on the lawn or in bridges shattering at that time in an olive is just being very very emotional and terrified that moment like we really realized what had happened and then going out on to the front porch and we were just on the front porch just a very short time looking at hot wires that were down nine broken items you know cars turned over houses go on and the national guard in the area were there and they immediately helped us cross those hot wires in those dangers ounce and paris into an area that they thought at that time was safe and went on to round up other people but then they realized that that area was safe and so they moved us over to another area because it was at a gas station of some kind that was on fire and they thought it was

going to explode so and at that moment i don't know if adam you could call it a near call or her ma'am somebody just a generous human being a very nice elderly couple stopped in and ask us if they could help us and they took my aunt in all of my cousins and my brothers and escorted us to their own private home fed as skinner snacks and winning today the channels to try to communicate with people back then they were only land mines so was difficult because so many of the power lines and telephone lines were down but they were wonderful people and i wish i knew their name now because i would love to still even fifty years later just be able to look at them and to say thank you so much you know what you did was a wonderful thing that helped a lot of children that were really

terrified that night cathy tell them lives in lawrence if you survived the nineteen sixty six topeka tornado we'd love to hear your story you can share with us on k pr as facebook page i'm kay mcintyre you're listening to k pr presents on kansas public radio today on k pr presents we're marking the fiftieth anniversary of the topeka tornado on june eighth nineteen sixty six and at five tornado half a mile wide ripped through the heart of topeka by the time i left the ground twenty six minutes and twenty miles later it claimed the lives of sixteen people injured hundreds destroyed eight hundred homes and damaged thousands more with property damage of more than one hundred million dollars the nineteen sixty six tornado was one of the costliest on record at the time although it's overshadowed by the topeka

tornado and i have three tornado hit manhattan kansas that same day according to the national weather service the manhattan tornado had a nineteen mile long path starting near fort riley and moving across the northern part of manhattan a car sixty five injuries destroyed eleven homes damaged three hundred more and cost almost two million dollars of damage a kansas state university also that same night two tornadoes were reported in leavenworth county causing one fatality and two injuries near jar below the second of those two tornadoes was an ef four on the ground for ninety miles tornadoes were also reported that date in clay and rice counties in fact there were more than fifty tornadoes reported over an eleven day period starting june third nineteen sixty six tornadoes were spotted in oklahoma texas nebraska iowa kentucky florida minnesota wisconsin and south dakota the topeka

tornado was by far the most devastating of those one man who has been inextricably linked to the nineteen sixty six topeka tornado is veteran broadcaster bill kurtis curtis has hosted and produced many news in crime documentaries he anchored cbs morning news for several years and has won numerous awards and honors including twenty eight emmy awards he can be heard every saturday on npr's quiz show wait wait don't tell me kurt is currently serves on the kansas public radio advisory board in fact his relationship with k pr dates back to the early nineteen sixties when he attended the university of kansas curtis worked as a student announcer at k n u the flagship station of kansas public radio but by nineteen sixty six curtis was attending washburn university law school and working part time at a peak a television station debut i'd be debbie

you his broadcast the night of june eighth nineteen sixty six was widely credited for saving many lives bill curtis joins us by telephone from his office in chicago i was all set to love but i'm a lawyer either three years and say well turn that preparation into practice about on the other side and very difficult decision for me because level to have won that time ten years experience in broadcasting we're broadcasting them know it's hard to believe i was in the nascent period of television movies or three cronkite in nineteen sixty two just become a half hour show the one we see today on the civil rights movement was being covered by television first time a giant movement like that

had been picked up luckily though generally we asked him to the attention of the nation and then that was sliding into vietnam in vietnam nineteen sixty six july was the first landing of us marines there's those clear that television or just getting on its feet i however didn't think that it was there yet there with a kind of seriousness that i wanted and so i decided i'm going to practice law that evening i left my packs review clients although the news director tom conway for wmd why would fill in for him so he could leave for vacation early and quiet over there two or three years there had switched from two years of being the weatherman night into movies being an anchorman and the other shooting go out i arrived the decision to bloggers and i

didn't thirty why resist to you know weather report that it was her front coming through manhattan and that it belong the roots of some garage building and we would later find out it was much more serious than that but that's the report that we got and so we went into a tornado watch mode we didn't have a doppler radar all the fancy gadgets that they do today so we would literally send spotters out watch the horizon some of life be aloof often coming in london and everybody is on station where we took that very seriously and so we said no to give back to my attacks review last but celtic around that when we go back on at seven o'clock people wouldn't like it interrupting their programs no he was gentle thirty in the intervening sixty miles from kansas city and although we did get though some shows

from kansas city it was in iraq or the label for cable he will with for the rural countryside and so they have to have a large antenna to pick up the kansas city station so everybody watched channel thirteen i mean we had like a family reading i am three quarters of the people with television sets it would be watching the station inn in topeka which wilt would later but i'm very important to forty five came a long long skies were darker although we really couldn't see outside but that we begin to get the ominous warning signs that that we were in for a severe blow and at seven o'clock we said ok let's go back on the air i was without a coat white shirt and tie buttoned down like the style of the day my wife and six month old baby were i in married housing on the campus of water i've always told her that if anything

theory is really ever lead color i was alive and i heard the alarm we could hear the two way around the corner in the newsroom all the way in the studio and i heard that while it was on the air two a cut in a minute with that rutherford it was a film camera man stationed there as one of our spotters on burnett's man the southwest edge of the city and he said we've got a tornado on the ground that broke kind of available have to feel of love taking tornado warning for granted and the attitude that i could never happen here you become inured to in a warning of wanting to end do you do and would come of it and all of a sudden we have a tornado on the ground and it's on the southwest edge of the city moving into the city can't

quite be true so i said to myself that this is all with fly ash in between words literally as i gave it a warning but we're going to say you know what happens after a verdict now i didn't say that but in my own mind i said i want a confirmation that mound was a hill at the southwest edge of the city a name for old chief burnett we've got a lot of the indian chief and the myth was that it was either an indian burial ground or via the little bump up for ryan that would cause a tornado two that's it that they come from southwest northeast it would get better then go back up into the air and therefore protected this very well and i was at a living killing waiting for that second hit it came when ed golden unfair we have to just wipe out the hunted

apartment complex that in the embassy a complex the decades since then but nevertheless i knew that it was recently constructed the two hundred units apartment building that we've covered and you could wipe that out it was a huge structure and it meant that it was a very very big tornado i never saw the tornado but those that did you know report what though we would now judged to be enough yet fired the head of the worst you can get and huge a pervasive block why easily and it was on the ground bombed and it was turning and causing problems and i knew that this was a it was headed for the capital berlin between the capitol building and the where it was so was the university will probably do nothing more than people i knew also that what i

said in the next few seconds would mean life and that it is not an exit for me but i didn't know what a furious i could be or exactly how to communicate about cutting i shot i thought about the crying because i felt that emotion welling up inside the responsibility of the hour and i'm glad we're not afraid is forgotten says the cover i think that's serious demeanor communicated i guess pretty well because at the end of the day even though the when it was on the ground for a twelve to twenty miles out we lost only eighteen people that's terrible but it was in the hundred and fifty one hundred and forty two that they lost in joplin why we have a warning and

seventy five percent of the people watching television watching channel thirteen they saw the warning we didn't have other firearms we didn't have no no water radio stations because the transmitters were going down but they were able to get that message on television and so that really sent most people through the basement the next day a long time after people will come to tears when lacey main could be in chicago today on the street come to me and say i was there for me by the mom and during a speech in emporia several years ago and the dedication of the pioneer woman that it was a hundred degree using the middle of summer and i came out of bleacher report after the speeches were you going to the un and the amazon basin well we're from korea

and topeka and all the little towns and we were watching that night when you said they're not think they cover and give the warning and we stayed with you all night for twenty four hours because we'll ever and will notable in topeka and you know companies have to live i don't think that has been repeated in my life and i am not true that i know any other circumstance where it's been repeated for other broadcasters but from that moment on i'm fine for me you know the saving the world from another lawyer says the supply of time fold the law firm in wichita the time except to where it affected the job that i wasn't coming and sent out a paper as his practice and within three months i was in chicago on the

biggest demonstrations in the countries that the us didn't figure for thirty years but it was that experience was formally really in my career my attitude my focus because i won the sky darkened it's a naturally go to the warnings that are available that my finger in the air to make my own judgment on whether another tornado whether tell you it was quite a one of them we are twenty four hours on radio and so we reached ninety three and one hundred and five counties huge radio station one of a great stations themselves and in the people all around the state have just one reason the firm made such an impression that the us bombed by listening to other tv ad count on the radio and you know especially when we

became sort of the center of the medications headset radio stations or off the air because of the powers of love the elderly or yeah that's right douglas plays water taking cover under an overpass covered with mud been the pictures you know whats off and so we have broadcast to call up the national guard a call for emergency crews with chainsaws ambulances began flooding into the town because the phone lines were down after just a few minutes and if they were down that we gather some people couldn't get through and so we began reading lists of names and families who work on survival and survive that one of their relatives to know in these thirty three counties that they're ok well we didn't know who was killed for the settlers of course before the military came in and started helping and they're then began at a series

of predictable stages to actually the disaster the first stage is you came through everything is gone people are dead but the he did attend sam stone classroom killings of washburn or in rubble and that will never be the same and yet we're a lot and there's a feeling of euphoria in the carnival atmosphere were alive and look a little but destruction around with and to their mom after months we've been talking to neighbors say something else that stage two alive but i have nothing but we going to do and that's when leadership and to get everybody together sober up will be rebuilt and we have a lot of the tools that are available to its mind about whether that was called the mud at the time that we didn't have trailers that were brought in to replace the law school and

you know lawyers for years afterward have to go to law school in the trailers and hand carry the books from the library for building the building so they wouldn't be destroyed by humidity and moisture for me at it you know it was the beginning of a career i was blown out of town and thirty years and i would go back for reunions and i felt sorry for everybody but la school of those conditions and then leave the third and the fourth work that reconstruction declared away reconstruction begins its hard work and later that determination and real gorilla your life will now be reconstructing what you had specifically when we had the old torn out of a copper though moment we had buildings that had been destroyed downtown and rail cars that were moved

and of course residential areas that were flattened the only concrete slabs love but the thing that everybody one of the city was the university it took thirty years before the trees reach of fires that you could not see the path from bird that's mount for twenty two miles through the entire show that thirty years and i often think of the people who started reconstructing if they had known it would take thirty years for all traces of the arrest would've done that now thirty years a new generation comes in are your stories of a tornado and it's just the story to them for they will go on make new lives and that's like renewing itself we don't look back on that moment for those who were there

there has even gotten started your psyche and your image below perhaps posttraumatic stress disorder from whatever and the memory of that hearing from the way that we will never never forget to change their lives i'm visiting wei veteran cbs broadcaster bill curtis who was working a dead you i'd be dead you in topeka during the nineteen sixty six tornado <unk> kurtis you were on the air twenty four hours straight during and after the storm blew through topeka as someone who works in broadcasting i can say it's hard to imagine being on the air twenty four hours straight how did you do it well you have a lot of help first of all the newsroom was was bonded therefore ever about we had good their report and the people were dedicated their lives and even on the radio side so you begin developing or stream of information that's what we want information we

didn't have instant pictures like they do today because it was a videotape of those super eight film government which means he had the processes and development still pictures you know eventually came from of the newspaper but for me it was that the best source of information was flown on people the newsroom gatherings and they got a peek of whether national weather service and people that walking him now the studio is on the northwest side of the city so you have to make a real effort to drive out there to me although what would become the mending there for the entire us political the security benefit association life insurance campus and i remember the first shock was when newton vickers who was the judge walked in and he said

i think i was on what went wrong is gone and i'm here is judge only care the credibility of the church so it was a sobering moment i think for all of us because it was the first time we had seen someone who is there and you have officials coming in the national guard are using it as a medium and they become a traffic cop testing information but you know at the time if you're an eyewitness to that you really are not yet going to exaggerate but tell your friends it's almost the purest form of true because their accuracy is this limited what you saw when you thought it then you're telling the truth so we try to do as many of those as soon as we could but you know the adrenaline is so high that you did at twenty four year ago forty eight hours i as a broadcaster

and you about midway through you realize this is the biggest story of my life and will be did they do a good job we put together a hum of pamphlets after several months afterwards compilation of the letters that we received a minute i don't have a place to go and in the letters i've never seen anything like it sam you saved my life we were watching lost in space on cbs when you came on and you know your announcement cause this to go to the basement that we would have been killed if we had not been watching and watch do that i just want to thank you and we have thousands of letters that happens these days because of the news of that but suddenly we were very important part of our

lives for wi the w it has remained strong and has remained the community station because they were there mr chris hewitt show and hearing that washburn university was gone and as you mentioned earlier your wife and baby daughter were living in married soon housing on campus at what point did you get a chance to set in and make sure they were safe well i was gonna very old and fire hoses in the line and that often and so i couldn't go through the phone told helen and calm fortunately there was the victim of a newsroom who came why and said that we have through talent and she's ok she's headed for the science building which told me a lot she was not going to go well because i was going to color but our neighbor came by and they had seen the broadcast and they said no that insurance is on the air whether they explained to me and

i couldn't call and they all went up to the challenge really the newest building on campus and everybody married housing or who were studying on campus of time they'll probably down they felt affection as the tornado went directly over as he pulled up through the elevator shaft and when they came out it was the end of the world because cars were jammed into the light well leading into the basement aisle cars writing entries in the parking lot and all the buildings where in piles of rubble like ancient rome after from pillaging and in the hanging from the trees were droplets of rain that we're reflecting the sun's because as the storm front moves on the sunlit side and just this brilliant color without humility that

is just so shocking and so are mine if you are in the fact that you know i didn't want to know and four hours yeah i get all twenty four hours i can't remember the heavily get through villages couldn't get through on the telephone but i knew that you say after twenty four hours on the air was it like to come out of the television station and see for yourself the devastation well it was shocking because even though we had been reporting on the play we never thought it and all that reading we were reporting had been described to us and you know rachel my god it's real it wasn't just something that happens from world and you'd can permit number got out grassy lawn and would look down the grass blades that were almost criminally blown flat

in the direction the wind was blowing that's how forceful it was and then standing on a high point and watch watch the path lead up to the university and the on the arm the whole thing was so shocking that the adrenaline carries you insert some of the natural way of that get through that moment of disaster especially when you are a player in that mr curtis thank you so much for joining me today that he remarked a huge hole to go back over it again and hopefully you know we'll go out on an oral history you know what happened that's veteran broadcaster bill curtis who was on the air at debut i'd be dead you for twenty four hours straight the night of a nineteen sixty six topeka tornado before that we heard from biderman anchor either of handheld followed with it again if your remembrances you'd like to share with us visit k pr is

facebook page i'm kate mcintyre kbr present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas