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Path of Destruction: Tornado cuts through Central Street Corridor in Springfield

by Bill Dusty

Early Wednesday evening, shortly after the tornado that struck the region had swept through Springfield, I found myself driving home from work and observing a scene I had not entirely expected. In a two-hour trek that would normally have taken me only ten minutes, tops, I weaved my way through clogged traffic, downed trees and clumps of scattered debris as I slowly made my way closer and closer to my house in the South End of the city.

After well over an hour’s drive in traffic that barely moved, I had arrived at the head of my street, Adams Street, only to see that it was blocked by a fallen tree (or perhaps two of them). From there, the traffic was directed off of Main Street just before the Central Street intersection. That detour took us then to East Columbus Avenue, and from there, we were directed out of the city and onto I-91. So close to home, yet not able to get there.

I drove north a short distance to Route 291. I had heard on the radio earlier that 291 was closed to traffic. This report, though, was either incorrect or outdated, as the traffic on this route appeared to be normal. I took it and traveled to the Dwight Street exit. From there, I drove south back towards the South End.

After several more diversions – and perhaps another half hour of driving, I finally made it to the Mexitalia Restaurant on Maple Street. ‘Close enough‘ I thought as I pulled into its small parking lot and parked my Jeep. From there, I walked towards my home on Adams Street just a couple blocks away. (The intersection of Central and Maple Streets was also cordoned off by police.)

It wouldn’t be easy getting onto my street, though. The backside of the way had also been blocked by a fallen tree, and a fenced-in parking lot to the Northern Heights Apartments prevented me from readily crossing over from that route. The whole time, too, I was also talking with my brother, Bryan, over my cellphone. People had been trying to call me and text me all through my driving ordeal – and although I appreciated their concern for my well-being, after a while the sound of the phone ringing and “beeping” its text alerts while I was trying to navigate the clogged streets was a bit aggravating, I’ll admit.

After getting off the phone with my brother and deciding against walking across a vacant lot that had power lines draped along its length, I finally found a property where I could cross over. I apologized to the property owners who were clustered at the front yard clearing debris away from their sidewalk. They smiled and said “no problem.” Yeah, it was a little understandable, I guess.

By now, I was getting pretty apprehensive as I walked down my street, which was strewn with fallen trees. I had seen very many wrecked houses and rooftops with their shingling ripped away and worse, and I anticipated the worst even as I still clung to hope that perhaps I had been spared.

As I got to my house, then, I saw that a tree had fallen onto my front fence – a fence I had just replaced two years before after a car had flipped over onto it – and then noticed shingles littering my driveway and walkway. ‘Shit,‘ I thought to myself. One shingle had even embedded itself into my side door’s screen.

But as I looked up to my roof and walked around the entire house, inspecting it, I saw that there was nothing at all wrong with my home. The shingles were from someone else’s house! Hell, my place even still had power and cable.

At that point, I was tired and drenched in sweat. A friend of mine, John, meanwhile, had offered to let me stay at his place until things got squared away here. Not wanting to keep my car parked blocks away from me (and under these circumstances), I decided to accept his offer. I packed up an overnight bag and was standing there, still sweating, when it suddenly occurred to me that I wasn’t exactly bailing on a sinking ship. Slow down, I said to myself. I turned on the news, then, and took a shower before heading out for the rest of the night.

The next morning, I returned to Maple Street – still the closest I could get to my own street – and parked in a larger parking lot on the back side of a professional building. Central Street was still blocked off to traffic, and as I walked by a set of apartments there I saw firefighters escorting people out of the buildings. I overheard one police officer apologizing to a tenant, saying that it wasn’t safe for them to stay there. That was a warning I’m sure, now, hundreds of other tenants had heard up and down the neighborhood as just about every damaged apartment building in the area was also evacuated.

As I walked up to my house, I saw that my front gate was opened and a girl was sitting on my front steps talking on her cellphone. She started to get up when she saw me approach, but I waved to her that it was okay. The tree that had fallen on my fence was also blocking the whole street, and people had been skirting my small front yard (entering via my gate and leaving via my driveway) to get around. ‘No problem, given the circumstances.‘ I figured.

(Click on all photos to enlarge.)

Tree resting on my front fence.

Back at home, I took an assessment of the damage to my property. It was layered in debris from the storm – a few large fallen branches had fallen in my backyard in addition to the tree that was laying across my front fence. The cable television wire leading to my house had fallen down and was draped over my back shed. And there were the roof shingles, which I saw were all over the place.

Still, I knew I was one of the few lucky ones in the neighborhood. I spent the next couple hours cleaning up the yard, and I’d call the insurance company and cable company later on, I figured – no sense calling up for someone to come out for a repair quote, anyway, when vehicles still weren’t being allowed in the area. After taking a break, then, I packed up my camera gear and headed out to get some pictures.

It didn’t take long, of course, for me to come across carnage. My street, as I already mentioned, was wrecked with fallen trees – but even so, there wasn’t too much housing damage. The direct path of the tornado, apparently, had turned east just before Adams Street. It was on Central Street where I opted to venture next, then – and it was along that street where I would finally encounter the true enormity of the disaster that had befallen us.

I had heard on the radio that officials from the state and federal governments, including Governor Deval Patrick and U.S. Senators John Kerry and Scott Brown, had been taken on a tour of Main Street in the South End by Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno. If the mayor was looking for shock value, though, he would have done better to take them along the Central Street corridor. It was literally in ruins.

I began by taking pictures along the stretch of Central going from Main Street to Maple Street…

Central Street along the Northern Heights Apartments.

This set of houses is on the corner of Morris & Central Streets.

A shot of the apartments on Central Street that were ordered evacuated.

The National Guard kept an eye on the Central Street-Maple Street intersection.

After crossing Maple Street, I continued up the hill on Central.

The view up Maple Street.

These communications trucks were located throughout the destroyed neighborhoods.

The McaDuffie School, scheduled to move to Granby, MA, this year, got a rude kick out the door by Mother Nature.

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At the top of the hill, most of the buildings directly in front of me looked damaged, but not catastrophically so. It was only after I crossed the Pine Street intersection that I stumbled into the Apocalypse. There, the tops of apartment buildings were smashed. Entire homes had been stripped and moved from their foundations. The adjoining side streets Beech and Spruce had been laid waste – Beech Street almost entirely so. How everyone had apparently escaped death from the destruction I saw amazed me.

The scene on Beech Road, just off of Central Street in Springfield. June 2, 2011.

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I walked down Spruce Street to check on my buddy, Mike Dobbs, who is the managing editor of The Reminder Publications. A large tree lay across his small front yard, it’s branches already sawed off. I knocked on his front door, but no one answered. (I later learned he was okay and was himself out gathering news.) I continued on.

Everywhere I looked, I saw people wandering about. And although some looked lost – shocked even – I was impressed by the equal number of people who were busily clearing out their yards and homes. At one home on Beech Street, even as their house lay in tatters, windows smashed, the residents were dutifully sweeping up the refuse from their driveway and sidewalk and shoveling it into trash cans. Life was getting on.

I came across one person who said she had seen a dog inside a house and she apparently wanted to go inside to get it. The house had been demolished by the tornado. I advised her to stay out. For one thing, it wasn’t safe to go in there. For another, entering a property to take something out in times like these can be considered looting! And lastly, the dog will come out on its own when he’s good and ready (and hungry).

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I made my way down Central until I got to Hancock Street. There I turned up Hancock to check on another friend of mine, Linda, and her husband John. I had learned earlier that they had lost their roof to the tornado, but that they were unharmed. I got to their house and was greeted outside by John, who was busy clearing debris. Linda was inside the house with Suzanne Edwards, wife of City Councilor Melvin Edwards. (The couples are friends – Linda works with Keep Springfield Beautiful, where Melvin is currently President.) I gave her a hug – she still seemed pretty shaken up by the ordeal. She said she was home when the tornado struck their house. She said she could feel the whole house moving as it went over them. Adding insult to injury, then, after the tornado had swept through, depriving many of a roof over their heads, another storm came in and poured rain over the entire mess that same night.

I left Linda’s house and walked over to the nearby Elias Brookings School. It was wrecked. I went down Florence Street, then, where I came across Councilor Melvin Edwards, who was walking around checking in on people. I made my way back to Beech Street, then, and on again to Central.

The Elias Brookings School on Hancock Street.

Interior view of a home on Hancock Street.

After I got back to Central, a fire department official told me that I couldn’t go back the way I cam because they had closed off a portion of the street due to unsafe structures. So back up Beech I went, then down Florence to Pine Street, and from there I went back down Central and then on to downtown Springfield via Union Street.

Back on Central Street, but unable to go back the way I came. The building in the background was deemed unstable.

This building was wrecked off of Union Street.

A look down the back alleys, above and below, as I approached Main Street.

It's hard to tell from this picture, but the wall of this building, circled, is actually buckling over.

I had heard the night before that Springfield’s celebrated Red Rose Restaurant had been destroyed by the tornado. When I stood across the street from it, though, it didn’t look too bad from the outside (street level). I asked another guy standing there if the Red Rose was badly damaged. He said he thought not too bad, but the parking lot in the back was wrecked. “They’re not open today,” he said.

Then it dawned on me: I was starving. I had not eaten since Wednesday afternoon, and it was now just after 11:00am Thursday. Still, I walked around a bit more taking pictures before making my way across State Street. I snapped a couple of pictures of Court Square – again, not in nearly as bad a shape as earlier advertised (what are a few fallen trees when people up the road have had their entire houses demolished?) – and then made it over to JT’s Sports Pub to grab a sandwich and soda. The owner, Keith Makarowski, was there, working behind the bar with his employees. As I ate, I was reading a CNN story about the tornado on my Blackberry when, lo and behold, I came across the owner’s name and that of his restaurant. He had been interviewed by CNN the night before.

After lunch, I went back to my house in the South End to work on all the photos I had captured – well over a hundred in all, but whittled down to just over 80 by the time I weeded out the bad and uploaded them to Flickr.

You can check out all my photos by following this link.

Some observations:

• Again, I was impressed quite a bit by the resiliency of the people who had been hardest struck by the tornado. Their homes demolished, they were out there the next morning cleaning up their properties.
• It occurred to me after I looked at all my pictures, how nearly all of the fallen trees (but by no means every one) had landed across streets. Not parallel to them, or in the opposite direction. But directly across the street, thus blocking it entirely.
• My hat’s off to the emergency officials (police, fire), tree removal workers, National Guard and all the other men and women who helped get things back in order so quickly in the city. I was impressed by the speed by which they did their work and performed their duties. Good jobs, folks.

On another note, Springfield City Council President and Mayoral candidate Jose Tosado has released a statement announcing that he has suspended his campaign for mayor until July 1st, stating he wants to concentrate on the city’s relief effort.

This story is far from over – a lot of people are going to need a lot of help for some time to come. But let’s just hope we’ve seen the worst, anyway, and that we and all start repairing our lives even as we repair our shattered homes and communities.

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Posted by Bill Dusty on Jun 3rd, 2011 and filed under Bill Dusty, Cities & Towns, Contributors, Feature Stories, Latest Posts, Photos, Springfield. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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