![]() ![]() There was only time, if one is inclined to think that way, for the freeing of eight souls to continue their journeys elsewhere. ![]() No time for final thoughts or last-minute regrets, for so much as a cry of pain or yelp of warning. There had been, survivors said, simply no time. The walk-in cooler and the two freezers blocked a portion of the plummeting debris, creating instant, lifesaving lean-tos. The ones who survived did so because they chanced to be standing in just the right places. There were shattered bones and severed arteries and fractured skulls and lacerated organs and one transection of the brain stem-decapitation. Vezain and Schultheis, who never made it into the basement, died of blunt force trauma.īut those official-sounding causes of death, announced by Bernard at the coroner's inquest May 27 (2004) at the LaSalle County Courthouse, hardly hint at what actually happens to human bodies when crushed by a two-story building: the brutality, the blunt and unimaginable violence of hundreds of tons of stone and wood and concrete collapsing upon fragile frames and soft flesh. Then Jody Bernard, the somber, petite LaSalle County coroner, or one of her three deputy coroners, would climb down, examine the body and pronounce the death.Įach body was placed in a blue bag, then the blue bag was lifted out of the hole.Īt 6:59 a.m., they lifted out Jay Vezain.Īll but Vezain and Schultheis died of traumatic asphyxiation, which means they were crushed to death, probably in the first instant of the collapse, when the walls and floors began to pancake down into the basement. Bierbom's big machine removed the sections. Shortly before dawn, when all the bodies had been located, a chain saw cut away sections of Milestone's floor. There's a rather poignant description of what happened to the victims of the Utica IL tornado in this Pulitzer Prize-winning story from the Chicago Tribune: Think twice before you plan on driving/running into a tornado. In addition to debris impacts, many people are killed/injured from being violently tumbled along the ground or becoming airborne and then falling. The wind gets into cavities (eye sockets, nose, mouth, ears) and can do severe internal damage and ghastly mutilations. Joplin tornado victims able to recover lost photos nearly a decade later We started praying, and I felt something touch my shoulder, and I looked up and thought it was my cousin, Lillard said. Any wounds will be deeply penetrated with fungus and bacteria-rich soil, causing serious secondary infections. Tornado winds at the surface are densely packed with small particles that will 'sandblast' off clothing and large patches of skin. Here are a few things gleaned from these sources, some I hadn't fully grasped previously myself: Yes, we probably know that to some extent, but do we know *how* bad it actually is? The movie depictions of someone in a tornado (and maybe our own perceptions and confidence in armored vehicles) are a far cry from the realities. While doing some reading last night, I discovered a rarely-talked-about aspect of tornadoes that while macabre, is probably something more of us should think about.
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