Six injured, one killed when tornado strikes Dongola

DONGOLA, Ill. -- A tornado ravaged Dongola in the wee hours of Sunday morning, plucking hundreds of trees from the ground, snapping power lines in half and demolishing homes and businesses throughout the town.

One of the town's 750 residents -- 69-year-old Janie Chamness -- died when the storm tore through her mobile home. Six others were injured.

Meteorologist Jim Packett with the National Weather Service in Paducah, Ky., said the tornado was classified as an F3, producing average wind speeds of 180 miles per hour, and hit Dongola at about 1:33 a.m., less than an hour after another tornado hit Marble Hill, Mo.

As friends sifted through the debris from Donna Goins' home Sunday afternoon, one of them came out of the house with a handful of Goins' porcelain angel collection.

"I found your angels," the woman said with a smile. "And they're not even scratched!"

Goins stared in disbelief.

Then another friend came out of the house.

"I have some too," she said. "They're not scratched either."

Again, Goins just stared at her friends and the once-beautiful home behind them.

"I had angels in my bedroom, and they aren't even scratched," she said. "I guess they kept their hands upon us."

Mother warned her

Goins had been sleeping on a couch in the living room at 1:18 a.m. when her mother called to warn her the storm was headed her way. Her mother and sister live in the same neighborhood three miles south of the Goins' home in Dongola.

"I told her to bring my sister and her three children up here because we have a basement," she said. "When they got here they came in, I shut the door and locked it and said 'We better get in the back room.'"

As she turned her back toward the basement door she heard a noise like a freight train. The next thing she knew the windows had been blown in and debris was flying all around her.

"It's amazing, nobody was hurt, not even a scratch," she said.

When the sun came up Sunday morning, Goins and her husband saw the scope of damage the tornado had done to their house.

The entire front room, including the couch Goins had been sleeping on, had been sucked out of the house and strewn across the front yard and nearby Dongola Lake.

By 8 a.m. the Red Cross, Federal Emergency Management Agency and several volunteers from surrounding towns and counties were busy cutting down tree limbs, sweeping the roads and cleaning up debris throughout the town.

Still hanging by paper clip

Opal Osman, an 81-year-old woman who lives alone in her Dongola home, didn't know the storm was coming until she heard something beating against her windows.

"I just heard a noise like sticks or hail hitting the windows, and I got up," she said. "I didn't even get to the basement and it was gone."

When she walked outside to survey her yard, she discovered that all of her trees were either on their sides, cracked in half or leaning over the road.

"It's really something," she said. "My trees are down, but I have a hummingbird feeder that hangs on the back gutter by a paper clip and it's still there."

Across town, Wanda Snell and her 16-year-old daughter Ashley thanked God no one was living in the single wide trailer next to their house.

The Snells own the trailer and had been renting it to a disabled woman up until Friday.

"She just moved out, and we had found someone who wanted to buy it," Wanda Snell said.

When the tornado passed through Dongola it lifted the trailer, turned it upside down and placed it on top of Snell's husband's truck.

The only thing not damaged was the small wooden deck that once stood at the rear of the trailer.

Only slight damage, like a few missing shingles and a broken door hinge, was done to the Snell house.

Son driving home

Burna Ryan couldn't believe no one in her home was injured in the storm.

She and her youngest son, 20-year-old Justin DeWitt, were sleeping when the phone rang around 1:15 a.m.

It was her oldest son, 26-year-old John DeWitt, who was driving home from Anna, Ill.

"He called me on his cell phone and told me it was coming," Ryan said. "I crawled into the kitchen, but it was as far as I could go. I didn't even have time to get to my son or the basement."

The storm blew out the windows in Ryan's kitchen and knocked a tree onto the side of her house.

Ryan said when John DeWitt finally made it home the storm had passed.

"I'm just thankful everybody's OK," Ryan said. "There's a tree laying on the house and trees on the automobiles, but nobody's hurt."

The Dongola School District will be closed today, and the high school was converted to a storm shelter.

About 2,000 customers in the Shawnee Region of AmerenUE were without power Sunday, most in the Dongola and Cypress areas, said AmerenUE spokesman George Sheppard.

"I can't predict a timeline for when power will be restored because we don't know," he said. "It is going to be sometime."

City officials said they were told it might be Wednesday before the power is back on.

hkronmueller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 128