Tornado injures at least three, damages homes in SE Colorado town of Holly

Hector Gutierrez, Rocky Mountain News

Thursday, March 29, 2007

A tornado ripped through Holly on Wednesday night, causing substantial damage to several homes and buildings, downing power lines and injuring at least three people in the small eastern Colorado town.

The twister triggered a blackout throughout most of the Prowers County town about 4 miles from the Kansas border.

Witnesses described the tornado as about 600 feet wide when it touched down south of the town of about 1,000 people about 8 p.m. The twister then spun about a mile and half into Holly, hometown of former Gov. Roy Romer.

The tornado downed many power lines and triggered several gas leaks, said Chris Sorensen, of the Prowers County Office of Emergency Management.

Carlyn Yokum, the superintendent for the Holly School District, said the tornado hit suddenly and left residents with little time to head for basement cover. Yokum said she lives about a block from where the tornado touched down. "We have no power," she said. "Everything is pitch dark. People didn't have time to take shelter or anything.

"We have no idea about injuries, but we've seen ambulances coming and going."

Yokum said authorities advised her to keep her phone line open in case they need her to open the schools for residents.

Colorado State Patrol troopers shut down U.S. 50 from the town of Granada, about 11 miles west of Holly, to the Kansas border because of downed lines along the highway, said Mark Aultman, state Department of Transportation spokesman.

Cheryl Willhite, who lives 2 miles south of Holly, said that after the tornado struck, she and her husband David, the town's former mayor, attempted to drive to town to help relatives evacuate from their damaged homes. They had to abort their efforts.

"We went back to get some family members from town," Cheryl Willhite said. "We then were advised (the tornado) was circling back to town and then we went looking for a basement."

Willhite said she saw at least a dozen homes with heavy damage. "It ranged from roofs that were off and windows that seemed to have imploded," said Willhite.

Cheryl Willhite said her husband was assisting emergency crews in town and had called late Wednesday to tell her that he had seen several houses that had been leveled by the twister.

Larry Walrod, meteorologist for the National Weather Service, said the service had issued severe thunderstorm warnings for the southern two-thirds of Prowers County during the evening. However, as the thunderstorms declined in strength, conditions became ripe for a tornado, he said.

"It just popped up very suddenly in Holly," Walrod said. The weather service only had time to issue a tornado warning when law enforcement officers called it in.

The weather service will be sending a team to the town today to survey the path of the tornado and to try to determine if it was one tornado or more.