After the storm, a scene of pandemonium, 'like a movie'

By KEVIN GILES, Star Tribune

Last update: May 25, 2008 - 11:16 PM

Holly Mulvaney knew something was wrong when the electrical transformer near her house crashed to the street, showering sparks.

Her family was having a holiday celebration at her house at the intersection of 157th Street N. and Fenway Avenue when a tornado hit their Hugo neighborhood about 5 p.m.

She and her husband quickly ushered their nine children and guests, including a disabled uncle, behind a partition in the basement. The tornado shook their house, and minutes later they emerged to see devastation everywhere.

"I've never seen anything like it," she said Sunday night outside Oneka Elementary School in Hugo, where evacuees were gathering. "It was surreal, like a movie."

Mulvaney found an injured woman crying for her children and gave her a blanket. Another neighbor, Jerry Unger, was helping to look for the children. One of them, he said, was found in a pond behind the woman's house and was being given CPR.

He said that it appeared that the child was one of two blown out of the house.

"It was pandemonium," Unger said. "We've got kids missing and everyone trying to find them."

Mulvaney and Unger said they heard sirens before the tornado hit. The storm came in two waves, Mulvaney said, with the tornado in the first. A second wave left banks of hail drifted amid the devastation, she said.

She said the odor of gas was strong and people were shutting off car engines and anything else that might create a spark. People walked around with panic-stricken faces, she said, inspecting the debris and helping her neighbors.

Unger said one family whose house was seriously damaged is on an ocean cruise. Another, Mulvaney said, went camping for the holiday weekend and doesn't know their garage is gone.

Mulvaney said she didn't see the tornado, but the damage showed that it hopscotched through the neighborhood on the west side of Hwy. 61, flattening some houses and inflicting moderate damage on others.

Unger and Mulvaney said their houses were inhabitable, but by midevening police ordered them out for the night.

They stood outside the school, mist gathering around them from pools of water from the storm. By late evening, the river of sightseers slowed to a trickle while emergency lights flashed in the devastated area.

Kevin Giles • 651-298-1554

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