Anne Marie Sacco believes in miracles.
That’s because she saw two on July 15, 1992, when a tornado ripped through her hometown of Kelayres, and then nearby McAdoo.
In her yard, there is a statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel holding the baby Jesus. The tornado tore down most of the grotto built around it — but not the statue.
“The whole top of the grotto flipped backwards,” Sacco said. “Our Lady of Mount Carmel was holding the baby. Only one finger of the baby was broken off.”
Her damage was not confined to the statue.
“We had $25,000 in damage,” she said. “Our awnings fell down. I couldn’t get in the door. A tree behind the grotto fell down, went through the storm door and the door in my laundry room.”
A block and a half down James Street is where the other miracle occurred.
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John Russo, since deceased, had gone out onto his patio — moments later the tornado ripped the roof off and tore down one wall of his home as he sat next to it.
The village and borough felt the full wrath of the tornado, but miraculously no one was injured. Schuylkill County Emergency Management personnel said 15 homes received major damage, another 23 minor damage, and 30 more sustained broken windows or twisted awnings. An estimated $1.2 million in damage was done in just a few minutes.
‘With all my might’
Kline Twp. Supervisor Carmen Cara remembers that day like it was yesterday.
Cara said a woman driving on Interstate 81 actually saw the twister cross the highway before going to the No. 8 Reservoir. It entered his lifelong hometown of Kelayres and tore through Russo’s home at First and James streets.
“His (Russo’s) brother’s and sister’s homes on either side of him were untouched,” Cara said.
When the tornado hit, Cara was in McAdoo with his son, also named Carmen. His wife, Mildred, was at their home with their daughter, Audrey, and grandson, Carmen III.
“I was parked in front of the bank,” Cara remembered. “I heard a ping, and turned around. There was a little hole in the back window. When Carmen got in the car, he slammed the door, and the back window shattered and hit us in the back.”
When Cara got to Kelayres, he found all of the streets blocked as he tried to get to his James Street home.
“I couldn’t make a left turn to go down to James Street because there was either a tree or a telephone pole that was down blocking the road,” Cara remembered. “I just thought to myself, ‘I gotta go and find out how the kids and my wife are.’ So I just put the car in reverse and went down the alley. And when I did, there was flashing (building materials) in the alley. I didn’t care, I just ran it over and blew a tire. When I got next to Second Street, there was something in the street. I stopped, and Carmen jumped out of the car and ran into the house to see if everybody was OK. They were, thank God.”
Cara then described what happened inside his home.
“The baby was in the middle of the floor, and Audrey was watching him,” Cara said. “She said when the wind started blowing, she went to put the window down — you know, the old metal storm windows — and it blew into her. She said, ‘I was holding it with all my might. I didn’t want it to get by me and hit the baby. With all my might, I threw it to the side. Then mom ran in, grabbed the baby and we went downstairs into the basement.’”
Cara paraphrased what his daughter saw when she was dealing with the window.
“She said, ‘When I looked outside, the telephone poles were yanked out of the ground, the wires were falling off the poles, and just bouncing off the road,’” Cara said. “She said there were sparks all over the place.”
Cara remembers telling his son about his garage being damaged.
“Then Carmen told me, ‘Hey Dad, Kunkle’s, Patton’s and Kohler’s garages are all down,’” Cara said.
After tearing through Russo’s home at First and James streets, the twister went halfway up First Street, and made a right turn down the alley between James and Center streets. It leveled garages owned by James Kunkle, Jerry Kohler and Francis Patton, and damaged Cara’s garage.
“It picked up the corners of the roof and moved it about a foot and a half,” Cara said. “The insurance inspector said the tornado lifted the roof, and made it bounce like a basketball up and down, and cracked the cinder block wall.”
Cara said his garage and roof were both saved, after a carpenter reinforced the roof and reattached it to the garage walls.
The twister then kept going east, tearing the roof off the Kelayres Town Hall. Kline Twp. Police Chief John Petrilla — then an officer — was in the township police station with McAdoo Officer Teri DelBalso, a native of Kelayres.
“It (the tornado) tore off the roof, and smashed the back window of the (McAdoo) police cruiser,” Petrilla remembered.
Blowing through
McAdoo
The tornado continued on to McAdoo, where it caused more damage. The storm hit the borough at 5:07 p.m. — the time on the clock in the window of Kline’s clothing store at Blaine Street and Kennedy Drive when the power went out.
Mary Labert was working in Widmann’s Discount Store — where the St. Luke Clinic is located, 16 N. Kennedy Drive — when the storm hit. The store was closed for two weeks after the storm.
“All of a sudden, it got very, very dark,” Labert remembered. “We didn’t know what was happening. It passed over us. A lady from (an apartment) upstairs came running down, crying, the roof of the building is gone. She just sat in the middle of the floor in the store. The glass in the store windows didn’t break.”
Across the street, a tree came down in front of the former Tom and Don’s Holiday Market — where First National Bank is now — and blocked Kennedy Drive, causing firefighters to respond to the town’s main intersection.
“We lost half of our roof, but with the apartments upstairs, we didn’t hear anything,” Labert said. “I lost half of the roof on my house on Butler Street.”
T-shirts that said “I survived the McAdoo Kelayres Tornado July 15, 1992” were produced and sold.
by Jim Dino
July 15, 2017
