Severe weather strikes all three NSCS colleges

Chadron, Wayne and Peru begin clean-up after a blizzard, a tornado and high winds wreak havoc

CHADRON 

After Winter Storm Atlas wreaked havoc Friday upon the Nebraska panhandle, including Chadron, Sunday brought sunny skies and began melting the roughly 14 inches of snow the storm left in its wake. The wet, heavy snow  downed trees, light and utility poles, and power lines, leaving hundreds without electricity, in some cases for several days.

Clean-up began Sunday and continues. On Monday groups of CSC grounds personnel sawed apart downed tree limbs and cleared branches of all sizes from campus roadways and sidewalks. Groups of students also piled debris onto curbsides to be hauled away.

As scores of people continued cleaning up Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Lavon Heidemann toured  the Chadron State campus, Chadron, and surrounding areas to assess Atlas’s damage.

“[The damage] is still being assessed,” Heidemann said Wednesday by phone. “It will be quite a while before that is determined.”

Heidemann toured Chadron and witnessed extensive tree damage, especially in the city parks, such as Wilson, which is closed for safety reasons. Tree damage was widespread throughout town and on campus, he said.

In addition to damage in town, area ranchers also lost hundreds of cattle to the storm.

 

WAYNE

As Chadron continues clearing trees limbs from streets, Wayne is just beginning to clean up the mangled path an twister left behind.

At 5:15 p.m. Friday, sirens screeched through the air as an F-4 tornado with wind gusts up to 170 miles per hour headed toward the Wayne community, Jodie Fawl, public relations representative for the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency, said Monday.

Measuring 2 miles wide, the tornado hit the outskirts of Wayne, demolishing everything in its path and injuring 15 people, one seriously.

John Dunning, Wayne State College’s chief information officer, was trapped between a dumpster and his vehicle while running for safety, Fawl said.

As of Monday, Dunning was in a medically-induced coma after suffering several broken bones. He is expected to survive, she said.

Gov. Dave Heineman visited Wayne Sunday and, according to Fawl, he estimated the damage to be in the tens of millions of dollars.

The damage stretches from the airport to the farm equipment dealership, which was flattened, Fawl said.

All but one building at the airport was destroyed. The Pacific Coast Feather, which manufactures beds for hotels and motels, was demolished, and numerous businesses and homes were lost, Fawl said.

Although the college was untouched by the storm, students were told to take safety precautions when the tornado hit.

“I honestly had no idea what was going on,” said Wayne State College student Riley Santin, senior of Palmer. “They sent out emails at 4 p.m. telling us there was severe weather. I found out about them [the tornado] because some friends from off-campus texted me and said they were in their bathroom, and that I should get in the basement; they said the sirens were going off, but even they could barely hear the sirens.”

News about tornado threats was ongoing most of the day. Consequently, native Nebraskan Megan Reece, 21, senior of Hebron, said she took the warnings lightly.

“I’m from Nebraska, so I just shrugged it off,” she said.  “Quite frankly, most of the day I was more concerned about Chadron because I had read on Chadrad about the fatal car accident, and I was worried about my grandparents.”

However, Friday evening, Reece heard the sirens and changed her attitude.

“I checked the weather underground website – at quick glance I saw the words ‘tornado’ and ‘spotted’ and started freaking out.”

 

PERU

On Thursday, Peru sustained damage throughout town from high-winds that knocked out power in town, including at Peru State College.

“On Thursday we lost power for 13 hours,” said Peru State student Jordyn Lukasiewicz, freshman of Farwell. “We all had to sleep in the gym. The winds blew lots of trees down; the winds were terrible.”

Another student, Abigail Bohling, 20, junior of Byron, called it a “freak-of-nature storm,” and said it damaged trees at the college.

“We are the campus of a thousand oaks,” Bohling said. “We are now the campus of about 987 oaks. The most damage received was the loss of many of our valued oak trees.”

Bohling said a tractor-trailer flipped onto its side, leaving behind what she said was a “smashed” vehicle.