My God.
Oh, my God, what happened was an
EF five tornado with winds of close
to 300 miles per hour.
Well, yesterday it was hit with a battery
and
it plowed right through downtown, toppling
buildings, crushing cars, burning dozens
of people in the debris some four hours.
This survivor explained to Channel 5 how he
was rescued.
He flashed that my left leg
and that that was behind the wheel.
And so he dug around a while and
got that got out and the breaks
and that kind of kind of ruined.
But by then, 114 people
had died, 56 of them in just one square
block of downtown Waco.
You know, the mass of it is just mind
boggling.
This Wilton Landing was just 16 years
old. He was driving downtown when the tornado
struck,
almost like I was being pulled right into
the to the storm.
And I gauge that.
And the fact that it was so terribly dark, I
couldn't see the car was shaking.
The street was just a cluster of
bricks and wires and
parks.
It took hours to find all the victims and days
for the bulldozers to clear away all the
debris. 200 businesses were destroyed
by the tornado that leveled an area two blocks
wide and almost a mile long just
in the downtown area of it.
Images of the destruction are displayed in a
special exhibit at the Dr. Pepper Museum.
The original Dr. Pepper bottling plant was
badly damaged in the storm, but then restored.
You can still see the scars.
Waco has been rebuilding for nearly five
decades now, but we're
happy to say there's been a
revival down here of interest.
Harry Harlech was just four years old when the
tornado destroyed his parents clothing store.
The tornado brought about an incredible spirit
of united efforts to not
only find and help those that had been hurt
in the tornado, but to
clear away the debris, to begin the rebuilding
process.
And that process continues this weekend
with a special 50 year anniversary ceremony.
On Sunday, hundreds of people will come here to
Heritage Square to walk the path the
tornado took.
Then, at exactly 440 p.m., the city
will sound the sirens to commemorate the exact
moment the tornado struck.
It's been 50 years since that fateful Monday
afternoon.
But to many of those who come here this
weekend, it'll seem like yesterday
Scott Jessner and Bc5 Waco.