"On that particular day we already knew there was going to be an outbreak across the region. A severe thunderstorm event here and tornado event much further south. It had that funny, eerie feeling in the air that morning as my gut told me it was going to be a bad. I went to church that morning, and then into Van Wert city afterward, stopping at Walmart. There were a few employees outside and I remember telling them “Hey we’re going to have some pretty bad storms coming in later today, you need to take down your big inflatable snowmen and Santa Clause.” Afterward I thought, “This is going to be a big day for severe storms” and things started happening quickly thereafter with watches coming out in Indiana. A lot of my family got together on an otherwise very nice day and on the way in to the EOC said “Hey you guys watch out! Things are going to happen here today!” I got into the emergency operations center (EOC), on a Sunday, as my policy is to activate the EOC anytime there are weather watches issued. I’m always here for the severe weather events. It still appeared at that point that the worst of the storms may skirt to the south, but what got my attention were tornado warnings coming out back in Indiana. I said to myself, “We are going to have some tornadoes here and they are coming our way.”. Eventually I deployed the spotter network into action as the warnings were getting close. When I activate, the fire departments take all of their apparatus out of the stations and position themselves around the county as I get updates on where the storms are tracking. I also activated the amateur radio network and put out statements. We were getting everybody in place and ready. As the tornado was approaching the Berne/Monroe area I activated the sirens countywide, not quite knowing for sure where that tornado was but with such a large supercell, I... went countywide with my activation. My first report from spotters was from the Willshire Fire Department in the southwest part of Van Wert County who radioed back that they could see it on the ground back in Adams County. As it’s approaching Willshire, the tornado lifted. I had a sigh of relief, maybe we are good and it’s over. I do remember one spotter called me on the phone and he said “you won’t believe this, I’m seeing red lightning, and I’ve never seen anything like this!” The storm moved over Willshire, passing the village of Wren, and my spotters then reported the tornado was back on the ground again, northeast of Wren, which later became the Van Wert tornado. Spotters were constantly giving me radio traffic, 3 phone lines in the EOC were constantly ringing and I was alone in the office. Amateur radio traffic plus fire department and police department traffic, all giving multiple reports. It got very hectic in the office really quick having to tune in to so many radio channels at once. I’m getting a play by play action and sirens are still going. Spotters were reporting major damage and the tornado was getting larger. And I know by watching it track, that it’s making a beeline for the City of Van Wert. As it got into the southwest side of town, it got really destructive, where it became an F4 tornado. The tornado did make a little jog back to the north, but I was never really able to determine why. Was it due to the squall line immediately behind it trying to pull it in? Anyway that little jog left kept it from coming through the center of the town as it tracked across the west side of Van Wert. At the time, we had a drive in theater there which sat right next to the Van Wert Cinemas which had 5 theaters in the complex. I knew that was a bad situation since Santa Clause 2 had just come out that weekend and there was going to be a big turnout of people coming and going. At the same time the movie Ring was playing. The people that like scary movies were going to be there also. The Santa Claus 2 movie concerned me because I knew that meant kids on a Sunday afternoon. Lots of kids. Fortunate for us the tornado struck in-between shows, but there were approximately 60 patrons inside Cinema 1 waiting for the Santa Movie. What really scared me was radio traffic that there was major damage along Zook Road with homes obliterated. I jumped up from the desk and I took a look outside the door... The sky was dark but you could really feel it given the strong inflow from the east. Back inside, spotters report its approaching Lincoln Highway and US 224 which is directly west of the cinema, about 1 mile. That was the last statement I put out. I activated the alert monitors then and said “We have a tornado on the ground at Lincoln Highway and US 224 approaching the cinemas!” I knew that was where it was heading and they were going to take a direct hit. That was a very bad feeling because the tornado had grown to one quarter mile at that point. The tornado sirens in Very Wert city had been blowing for 26 minutes constantly by that time. I had my door open and since they were on a 3 minute timer, I would hear them winding down and then I would hit the button to reactivate them and back on they would go so for those 26 minutes I sounded the sirens which meant everything in the world for those who heard them. People in Van Wert knew something bad was going on because of that. NOAA weather radios are going off, my alert monitors that I placed throughout the county are going off with my statements. The theater manager hears the alert monitor and sirens along with someone stopping in and saying a tornado was coming, he got everyone from theater 1 out and moved them into the restrooms (60 people), cinder block restrooms, and they went in and crouched down. In the other 4 theaters, those people crouched down under their seats. The roof went off the cinema as it took a direct hit. The tornado then hit the industrial complex on the north side of city and destroyed the county engineer’s facility, which is where we have a lot of heavy equipment. The equipment was destroyed and that initially hurt in the recovery/cleanup effort afterwards. Fortunately, it was a weekend and factories were closed. That saved us hundreds of lives because all of those people would likely have been killed. Those industrial complexes were gone, parking lots were wiped clean, buildings were completely destroyed and those complexes had no safe locations to shelter in. As the tornado approached US 127, a mile northeast of town, it hit the Cooper Foods plant, a big facility. At that point, spotters are reporting this tornado is getting larger and on video it looks like the mesocyclone is on the ground and the tornado doubles in size within seconds, enlarging from one quarter to one half mile wide. I continue to get reports of multiple tornadoes. From damage we saw, we actually had 1 vorticy that was dead center in the middle of the big funnel that did incredible damage and was the one that went right by the cinema and created the scarring we had at the drive in theater, but just missed the movie theater itself. Had it hit the cinema directly, it would have likely leveled it. After it hit and phones went out and lightning hit the EOC, I lost phone service but still had radio comms. Just before the cinema was hit, I put out a weather statement that the tornado was approaching the cinema. I quickly ran out the door and could see and hear 2 things. A constant rumbling, which sounded like buffalo running across the prairie, and the top of a very large wedge tornado as the bottom was blocked by buildings. I knew it was bad. The tornado stayed on the ground through the rest of the county and didn’t lift until it got into Henry County, Ohio. From the time it set down in our county to the time it lifted, was a 53 mile constant path. I know the other counties benefited from listening to my radio traffic so they knew what was coming. So a short time after it had hit here in town, I got a report from either the fire department or police department that the theater had been struck and that there was extensive damage. I was pretty sick to my stomach at that point. I knew my family wasn’t there, but wasn’t sure who I might know who was there. A small community like this, everyone knows everyone. That was a bad feeling. One plan that we have in place in the county is that those people who I need help from automatically come into the EOC. The first person to come in actually was the Mayor. The city police calls and talks to the Mayor, who gets this look of horror on his face and looked at me and said “I just got a report from the police department that everyone at the cinema was killed.” BAD… They had ASSUMED the worst as they drove onto the scene, they found a young gentleman, killed, whom had been thrown from his vehicle which was thrown into the first row of theater 1. He was driving by the cinema when the tornado hit. And they saw all the damage to the cinema and assumed worst case. I immediately contacted the state and asked to put the state mortuary team on standby as I’m going to have multiply deaths. A little bit later I got a report of another death out on Zook Road. A gentleman died protecting his wheel chair bound wife when large debris was dropped onto their home and came through their roof. She was seriously injured but survived. Fortunately for us only 2 deaths (not multiple deaths) had occurred in our county and 19 were injured. Our county engineer facility is destroyed so I had to request equipment from the state. Later, I called the governor and requested the National Guard to assist with the cleanup. I knew we had a lot of power outages, lots of damage and roads were blocked. In January of 2002, we became StormReady, one of 2 counties in Ohio to start right at the beginning, we did that to make sure we had everything in place including the alert system, NOAA weather radios in our businesses and schools and to capitalize on it and add to our system which I think really help limit the death toll. The people who lost homes found shelter with family and friends. The Governor and President both issued State and Federal Disaster Declarations, FEMA deployed, and people were able to get financial assistance including the cinema. Cleanup continued to the following spring. In fact, purses from Vera Bradley were found scattered across Defiance County. It was like Christmas in November for the ladies of Defiance County who had purses dropped into their yards. We had semi-trailers on top of Cooper Foods and one semi was never found. The farthest debris we heard of made it to Monroe, Michigan, which was a wedding dress, legal documents and pictures. That supercell updraft was so incredible that it held stuff up there for so long. That wedding dress was undamaged which was also amazing."

A Trail of Death and Destruction

Interactive Tornado Tracks