Feature Story

2008 TPA Better Newspaper Contest

First Place D4

Round Rock Leader

Jarrell Remembers A decade ago, tiny Williamson community was devastated By BRAD STUTZMAN JARRELL - Ten years ago Sunday — on May 27, 1997 — one of the deadliest tornadoes in U.S. history touched down in the tiny town of Jarrell, north of Georgetown off Interstate 35. The twister was labeled an F5 — the highest designation they have for these things — with winds reaching 260 miles per hour. That label — “F5” — quantifies the tornado's force. But it can't begin to tell the storm's story. Or the story of the Jarrell community. It was a Tuesday afternoon. The tornado hit with little warning. The death toll reached 27. Families were wiped out. An entire subdivision was ripped from the face of the earth, leaving concrete slabs where homes had been. The Jarrell community — consisting, then, of maybe about 1,000 people —was devastated. "It's something you never forget, for the rest of your life," says retired justice of the Peace Jimmy Bitz, who 10 years ago worked 44 hours straight, without sleep. First in rescue efforts and then, when there were no more to be rescued, in recovery and identification of the dead. "People helped people," Bitz recalls. "That's an important part of this story." All that was 10 years ago. Since then, much has changed: The town has incorporated. It has a mayor, city council, a police department with two officers and an estimated population of 1,400. A new high school is being built. A sewage treatment plant is in the works. Like a lot of Central Texas communities, Jarrell is a city on the move. But much has not changed. Jarrell is still small-town America (and proud of it), with life centered around the bedrock institutions of family, church and school. The community — and the people in it — combine fatalism with optimism, and defiance with faith. There is a determination to go on living, without a lot of public fanfare about what happened 10 years ago. Jarrell was devastated by the 1997 tornado, but it was not destroyed. "We are not defined by that tornado," Mayor Wayne Cavalier says. 'This big wall coming at you' Jarrell had its experience with tornados before. A small twister, in 1987, damaged buildings. One that followed, in 1989, killed a woman. So severe weather is not uncommon or unexpected here. But nothing could have prepared Jarrell residents — or emergency responders — for the afternoon of May 27, 1997. "We had little tornados that would take trees and stuff, but nothing like that before," Esther Tschoerner says, receiving a visitor last week. Mrs. Tschoerner is now 70 and a widow. She's been slowed by back trouble and, most recently, knee replacement surgery. But she counts herself lucky to be alive. Ten years ago, her mobile home was smack in the tornado's path. Mrs. Tschoerner and her husband, Eddie, were outside with their daughter, Rose Smith, and their granddaughter, Traci Sundberg, who was then 9. "We're outdoor people," Mrs. Tschoerner recalls, speaking during a previous conversation with that same visitor. She remembers how she and her husband — when he was alive — ran some cattle and kept a garden on their 15-acre spread. Mrs. Tschoerner remembers how fast it happened, when the tornado hit at mid-afternoon that Tuesday: "The sun is shining. It's hot. Then all of a sudden you look up and this big wall is coming at you." Everybody fled into the mobile home. A squat and sturdy little one-story, hand-built concrete building stands between where the mobile home was and where Mrs. Tschoerner's new home is. Reporter later dubbed that concrete building "the bunker" and Mrs. Tschoerner laughs, as if she would not have come up with that colorful nickname on her own. But she credits the bunker with blunting the tornado's impact and saving the lives of her loved ones. "My daughter grabbed a mattress and hit the bathtub. Me and my husband just fell down on the floor. And started praying.” The mobile home was obliterated. "There was nothing but floor," Mrs. Tschoerner remembers. "And us layin' on the floor." Sixteen minutes of hell The tornado hit at about 3:30 p.m. and was on the ground for approximately 16 minutes, cutting a path one mile wide as it moved southward. Justice of the Peace Judy Hobbs, of Taylor, would later remark an F5 is so rare that everyone who was at the scene, in Jarrell, might be dead before another one strikes anywhere. Given that rarity, no one was prepared for the devastation of May 27, 1997. The tornado stripped the bark off trees and the hide off animals, killing some 300 cows and horses. The Double Creek Estates subdivision — located west of Interstate 35, a short drive from downtown and a short walk from Mrs. Tschoerner's home — bore the brunt of it. Thirty-eight houses were destroyed. "It was just slabs," Bitz remembers. "It actually rolled asphalt off County Road 305 ... The debris and stuff was rolled up in plies as high as six-foot.” At first, no one had any idea how bad the damage really was, or how many lives had been lost. "One of the deputies who rolled up radioed back to dispatch, 'Nothing showing.' Bitz says. "He didn't know there had been a subdivision there minutes earlier. "I was in my vehicle between here (Georgetown) and Jarrell when I got the call. I thought maybe it was one or two (deaths) I didn't know the devastation." Robert Tschoerner — Esther's son was a member of the Jarrell Volunteer Fire Department and was on his way home, from his job in Georgetown, when the tornado hit. "They were talking on the radio about damage here, damage there. I wasn't prepared for what I saw after that. "After I saw my parents were OK, I didn't see them again for the next three days." Mayhem and mercy Those 16 minutes in Jarrell made national and international news. Beginning Tuesday — and continuing for the next several days — the community's population swelled. The Red Cross took blood donations, and handed out coffee and sandwiches. A Mennonite men's organization came to help rebuild. Wal-Mart sent a big tractor trailer full of water and the Boy Scouts showed up to unload it. Eventually, $1.5 million in private donations came in, from all over America. People's generosity matched the enormity of the disaster. Each report coming back from Double Creek seemed worse than the one before it. Blades of grass were impaled into human bodies, like spikes. A mother and child were found under a pile of rubble, huddled in each other's arms and both of them dead. All that was left of one woman was her left hand. Relatives were able to identify her only because of the wedding band she wore. Refuse to lose "That event was an international event," says Mayor Wayne Cavalier, a retired 28-year Army veteran and since incorporation in 2001, the only mayor Jarrell has ever had. "I'll be overseas and people will say 'Where are you from?' I'll say Texas and they'll say, 'Where in Texas?' I'll say Jarrell and they'll say, 'Oh, where there was that tornado.' "We acknowledge the tornado was part of our past," Cavalier says. "But it does not define who we are." Mrs. Tschoerner agrees. "I feel for those people in Kansas," she says, referring to a recent killer tornado that struck the Midwest. "They'll get through it, the same as we did. It just takes courage to keep going." To the casual passerby, Jarrell might appear unchanged. The view from the interstate, moving west toward downtown, is remarkably the same as it was 10 years ago. The streets are numbered and the avenues are lettered and there's not too many of either of them. The fire station, where the dead were taken 10 years ago, is still here. So is the little Baptist church, painted white, where loved ones waited for word. But Jarrell is growing. A new and larger high school is being built. Work on a sewer system is about to begin. "There are so many positive things going on in the community" says Jeff Stockton, whose family has been in the local real estate business since 1967. Earlier this month, Stockton was elected to the Jarrell City Council. ....