Hesston shows few scars from tornado 30 years ago

By ROD ZOOK

Hutch Post

HESSTON, Kan. — March 13, 1990, started like any normal day for the small town of Hesston. By the end of the day, a large portion of the town lay in ruins after an EF5 tornado ripped through the heart of the Harvey County community 30 years ago today.

"It was a pretty afternoon," Hesston Fire Chief and EMS Director Russ Buller recalls. "It was kind of hard to believe anything bad was going to happen."

But as the afternoon wore on, things began to change.

"When they started talking about . . . the storm cells starting up southwest of Hutch, I headed to Hesston to kind of prepare," Buller said. "Because it just had a funny feel about it."

Buller says when the tornado rolled through the city around 5:40 p.m., they were wanting to help the victims who lost their homes, but knew they had other work to do.

"The EMS Chief Richard Toews and I were out in my pickup tracking the tornado as it came into town. And we followed right in behind it," Buller recalls. "We pulled in and immediately saw houses ripped down to the basement. We stopped at one point thinking that we needed to jump out and render aid. Then we quickly realized that we needed to get things organized."

For Toews, it was a time where they saw a small community rise up from the terrible destruction

"The mall was rebuilt, Kropf Lumber was rebuilt," Toews said. "The houses that were completely torn down right around the mill area. There's a library there now. Everything was rebuilt."

One thing Toews remembers is how fast help came after the storm.

"We came up to city hall and, fortunately, Newton sent up a unit loaded with all kinds of supplies," Toews recalls. "In that process, we set up a grid search. We started going through the town systematically until about 3 o'clock (a.m., we decided to call it off. Then in the morning we went back and searched it again and everything was much better than we thought."

Here is a look at Hesston after the tornado and how those same areas look today:

This is Hesston Electric on North Main the day after the tornado. Below is the way it looks today.

Behind the business was another longtime company in Hesston, Hesston Concrete. The company was also leveled by the storm.

The remains of Hesston Concrete following the tornado. Today only the concrete sand bunkers are left.

As the tornado moved through town, it passed through the playground at Hesston Elementary School, throwing debris from the damaged houses to the west into the playground.

The playground at Hesston Elementary is littered with debris after the tornado tore through the neighborhood along Weaver Street. The playground is now home to Hesston High School softball and the elementary school.

The tornado first moved into the northwest side of the city where it hit a machine shop, a small strip mall and several houses in a mostly undeveloped residential area. One of the buildings damaged was the Roupp Apartments. Today, homes sit where the complex used to stand and the neighborhood is fully developed.

Residents and friends help sift through the damage of the Roupp Apartments. Below, modern homes now sit in its place.

The tornado also caused major damage along Main Street just to the north of the downtown area.

The area of Main just north of the downtown area that was spared. The cinder block structure in the foreground still stands today along with the Mennonite Disaster Relief offices and the new library that replaced many destroyed homes and businesses in the area.

Two people were killed in the storm, although none were in Hesston. Debris from the storm was found as far away as Manhattan. Despite the considerable damage, the town was lucky that the tornado missed Showalter Villa Retirement Home, Hesston College, the large trailer park and the more established part of town.