Kansas community faces years of recovery

Tornado struck town near Wichita Friday

Destruction from a powerful tornado that ripped through a Kansas community will take years to recover from, a local official said, as residents began Saturday to assess the damage to their homes and businesses.

Andover Fire Chief Chad Russell told reporters Saturday that no critical injuries or fatalities have been reported from the twister, which touched down Friday evening in Sedgewick County, near Wichita, before traveling into Andover, where houses in some neighborhoods “were completely blown down.”

Officials have said a small number of people suffered minor injuries.

But nearly 1,000 buildings were in the path, including the city hall, which sustained damage and hampered some of the response efforts, Russell said during a news conference.

Early analysis showed the tornado, one of a handful reported Friday across Kansas and Nebraska, might rate at least an EF3 on a 0-to-5 scale for tornado intensity, meaning wind gusts up to 165 mph.

About 8 p.m., the tornado hit Andover, a city with a population of nearly 15,000, hurling debris up to 21,000 feet in the sky.

Russell said Saturday that it was not the first time Andover had experienced such devastation. On April 26, 1991, an F5 twister — the highest possible rating — roared through parts of the city, killing 17 people and injuring 225. That tornado was part of an outbreak that dropped 55 across the Plains.

“Unfortunately, we’ve been through this before,” Russell said, adding: “We’ll get through this.”

Drone footage of the wreckage captured Saturday by storm chaser Aaron Rigsby shows houses with roofs ripped off, many reduced to piles of rubble. Cars were left crumpled, tossed into some of the homes. The video also shows some people outside, taking inventory of the widespread destruction.

Rigsby, who is stationed in Oklahoma City for storm season, told The Washington Post the tornado was strong but narrow. “So the damage path was a very destructive one, but it was a very narrow swath,” he said.

He said some homes were destroyed — a couple down to the slabs — while neighboring homes were left nearly untouched. At the YMCA, about a dozen cars were smashed, but, across the street, a school sustained lighter damage, with broken windows and a caved-in doorway, he said.

Rigsby said people were returning to their homes to assess the damage.

“What this tornado did was it caught a lot of people off guard,” he said. “A lot of people were at work or out for dinner when the tornado struck, and they couldn’t get back to their houses because the roads were closed.”

Victor Gensini, an associate professor of meteorology at Northern Illinois University, said it’s not uncommon to see tornadoes destroy one home and leave one next to it with minimal damage. “Tornadoes can move very sporadically,” he told The Post. He said the path width of the Andover tornado — or its footprint — was relatively small, which may help explain why some homes nearby were spared.