TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) – June 8th marks the 59th anniversary of Topeka’s most devastating natural disaster.
On Wednesday, June 8th, 1966, many lives changed as normal day ended in tragedy.
“It was like a giant world wind, it was kind of light in color, out by itself from a kind of a line of dark clouds. The sun was shining bright but about 500 feet off the ground was a large barn coming apart,” said Ed Rutherford, former WIBW-TV photographer and one of the first to see the tornado.
“I looked out to southwest Burnett’s Mound, the tornado was behind it, it looked like. It was huge. They said ‘How fast was it going?’ I said 35 miles an hour. They said ‘Impossible they just don’t go that fast,’” said Felix Burkhart, a witness of the tornado.
Locals across the Capital City, took cover, hearing former WIBW broadcaster, Bill Curtis’ famous quote: “For God sake, take cover,” on television.
An F5 tornado tore through the city taking the lives of 17 people and injuring over 500 more.
Grounded for just 34 minutes, entire blocks were leveled to piles of wood and stone while homes were left in ruins.
“The city side of the mound literally exploded. The tornado passed the area I was in and then it became so very, very quiet. No dust, no anything but devastation. It looked like a war zone,” said David Hathaway, former Topeka police officer.
Beverly Blaser, 1966 Topeka tornado survivor, recounted the day.
“My father called and talked to my sister who was 14 at the time and told her that there was a tornado coming and that we needed to take cover. We huddled in a corner behind an old stuffed chair and I can remember the pressure in the room changing. I can remember the noises in the room were just horrible.”
“Our house was totally destroyed. We had an airplane bungalow and the top part of our house was gone,” said Kay Conn, 1966 Topeka tornado survivor. “We had lots of stuff in our attic like people do. That part of the house was all gone and the only thing that was left was a cardboard box with Christmas tree ornaments.”
Yet, locals remained resilient, helped one another pick up the pieces that were once destroyed, including Bill Johnson, who was a boy scout at the time.
“They would assign us an area where to go work. One time we worked on the Washburn campus and helped them with the removal of the tree limbs. We were working right alongside National Guard troops and Red Cross would come out and bring sandwiches at lunch,” Johnson said. “I felt bad that I was going to go home and I had a bed to sleep in and maybe the guy I just helped clean his house up didn’t.”
The damages to the city totaled to $200 million dollars.
View a
full documentary
of the 1966 Topeka Tornado on WIBW’s YouTube page.
