Tornado severely damages Henryville, Ind.

HENRYVILLE, IND. — A light rain was already falling Friday when students from the Henryville elementary and high schools were sent home at 2:30 p.m., 20 minutes before regular dismissal.

The rain was a prelude to the most destructive tornado in residents’ memory. The storm started with a funnel cloud that touched down at about 3:15 p.m. — 45 minutes after the schools sent the students home — followed minutes later by a monster tornado.

Bus drivers herded students onto buses, but not enough time remained to get them all home. The drivers took matters into their own hands, driving their buses through fields, speeding to reach the next stop or shuttling the remaining students to one home to get them all out of danger.

A little before 3:15 p.m., Bus 211 returned to the school’s parking lot, unable to outrun the storm. The driver rushed 11 students back into the high school, where they took refuge in the principal’s office along with 15 other people.

Moments later, the storm lifted the bus and tossed it through the air, launching it through the front window of Budroe’s Family Restaurant.

Nick Shelton was working on a lift in the back of his auto body garage, Henryville Auto Services, across the street from the school. As he worked under the car, no TV or radio played news coverage — there was nothing to warn him of the storm as he continued his routine.

In Budroe’s Family Restaurant next door, employees and customers were watching the news and knew they needed to take cover. They knew Shelton wouldn’t know the storm was close. He wouldn’t have anywhere safe to hide in the open garage. With the storm approaching, someone from the diner ran to Shelton’s garage, telling him to join them in the diner’s basement.

They made it just in time. As eight people crouched in the diner’s basement, the now-empty Bus 211 crashed through the wall.

On Saturday, Andy Bell, Shelton and some friends stood next to Shelton’s demolished garage, now a pile of metal and debris. Two of the friends sorted through the wreckage.
Bell said he couldn’t believe what he found in town.

“Henryville doesn’t look the same,” he said. “When I came into town last night, it was like a new town.”

Destroyed houses and businesses surrounded the schools for miles. The EF-4 tornado with 175-mph winds that swept through the town and others closeby, including Marysville to the northeast, left more damage than Clark County Sheriff Danny Rodden could describe the following day.

“It has been assessed that we’ve got the largest area of problem, the most widespread,” he said. “It is very rural, so we’re doing the best we can, going door to door.”

The Henryville tornado was the first of two in the area, weather officials said, and they followed essentially the same path, separated by about 10 minutes. Officials said the first tornado was on the ground for 52 miles and measured about 150 yards wide.
In total, 12 fatalities were counted in southern Indiana.

“Most of the searches are completed,” Indiana State Police Sgt. Jerry Goodin said. “We hope the number stays at eight for our three counties, but as this progresses throughout the day, it would not surprise us to have other fatalities.”

Where Highway 161 enters Henryville, a gas station lay in a pile, like Shelton’s garage, across the street from a second gas station that was barely touched.

A few blocks down, windows were blown out of a house that had been going through renovations. Near the front window, a box marked “Barb & Charlie’s baby memories” spilled onto a table.

New Washington State Bank, near the house, posted a sign on its front door — “Bank closed temporarily, equipment problems.” While the building remained intact, the drive-up ATMs were nowhere to be seen.

The Henryville elementary and high schools on Ferguson Street downtown took the brunt of the damage. Three or four buses remained in the parking lot Saturday, knocked to their sides, the windows shattered. Madelynn Evans, 6, threw a stick at Bus 201. Her mother, Wendy, shot her a look, then pulled Madelynn to her side.

On Saturday, Madelynn and Wendy stood in the rubble near the bus, surveying the destruction to the town’s only school building — now missing most of the elementary school and the back wall of the high school’s gym. Photos of past basketball teams still hung on the gym’s walls, but the floor was covered in fallen debris.

The high school had celebrated its 100-year anniversary last year, and the elementary school was added two years ago.

“See the framework over there,” Bell said, pointing to the school. “That’s all that’s left of the two-year addition.”

Now, students, parents and faculty are unsure about what will happen. According to the high school’s website, both schools will be out the week of March 5-9 due to the damage. But the school can’t be rebuilt in that time.

“We could be out for a couple months — we could be out all year,” senior Logan Chapman said.

Junior Miranda Hopper, wearing a Henryville Athletics sweatshirt, said she wanted to cry as she looked at the demolished school.

“I’m in such disbelief,” she said. “I can’t take it all in.”

“I had 40 math problems to do in geometry, and I didn’t want to do them,” she added. “Now I wish I had them to turn in.”