Ruston tornado anniversary

Lincoln Parish Director of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Kip Franklin still has a piece of siding hanging on his office wall from the house at 611 Evans Street in which Kendra and Remington Butler died.

Some weeks later, as the Butlers’ rental house was being torn down, Franklin salvaged the ripped-off piece of siding with the house number on it and affixed pictures of Kendra and Remi to it.

Kendra Butler, 35, and Remi, 14, heard the weather warning sirens, and along with other family members, ran for a hallway.

But a large tree fell on top of their house, killing mother and son instantly. First responders found them literally clinging to each other.

Evans Street is just a few blocks from where meteorologists say the EF3 tornado that hit Ruston shortly before 2 a.m. on Thursday, April 25, 2019, revved to its worst.

It’s also just a few blocks from the new Ruston Strong Memorial fashioned around the base of the century-plus-old historic dairy smokestack that withstood the storm.

Thursday marks the fifth anniversary — even to the day of the week — of the early morning storm that left the Butlers dead and damaged or destroyed more than 100 homes and businesses along an almost 7-mile path that stretched almost from one end of Ruston to the other.

At 1:30 p.m. Thursday, city officials and others will gather near the smokestack on North Monroe Street and dedicate the memorial plaza to Kendra and Remi Butler and remember Ruston’s resilience and unity in the aftermath of the worst natural disaster in the city’s history.

Ruston Mayor Ronny Walker said the old Midwest Dairy smokestack that was untouched by the storm stands as a symbol of the city’s strength.

“The tornado came right through that area, but the smokestack is still standing, strong as ever,” he said.

The plaza includes benches where walkers along the new Monroe Street Corridor can stop and rest, or where anyone can pause to reflect. Walker said the memorial also shows the city’s gratitude to not only its own workers but also everyone who helped with storm cleanup and rebuilding.

“We need to look back and say thank you to all the people who helped us,” he said. “At the same time, we need to memorialize the two lives that were lost.”

The storm system that spawned the tornado started in San Augustine, Texas, and would travel about 200 miles, spinning off eight tornadoes in Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas before heading through the Tennessee Valley.

The EF3 storm that hit Ruston was the strongest and was the only EF3 tornado spawned. It carried peak winds of 145 mph.

The tornado hit at 1:47 a.m., Thursday, April 25, a week after the first anniversary of an EF2 tornado in 2018 that cut a much smaller path through south Ruston, causing damage but no fatalities.

The 2019 twister first touched down just northeast of the intersection of Highway 80 and La. 818 in southwest Ruston. It continued northeast, where it crossed South Maple Street and intensified.

The tornado did widespread damage in parts of the Cypress Springs neighborhood, including Robinette Drive, then kept spinning its way to University Boulevard and the Westwood Hills Subdivision.

The twister snapped and uprooted trees, hurling them on rooftops and leaving streets impassable.

It plucked up more trees on the edge of the Louisiana Tech University campus before crossing the then-Kansas City Southern railroad tracks and majorly damaging the university’s baseball, softball, and soccer fields.

It crossed nearby Greenwood Cemetery, where it intensified again and caused more severe damage for the next third of a mile.

Businesses near I-20 sustained significant hits; the top- story exterior walls of the America’s Best Value Inn collapsed, leaving guest rooms intact but exposed.

The tornado took out a convenience store between Trenton and Vienna Streets, then crossed I- 20, heading northeast. Though the storm had weakened, it continued to fell trees and smash structures in its way.

Eventually, it headed across Farmerville Highway and out of the parish.

“This was the strongest, hardest tornado to ever hit Lincoln Parish,” Franklin said.

Walker remembers already being awake when the tornado hit. It was raining.

“The biggest thing was just walking outside and realizing something was happening and getting the call from (Ruston police) Chief (Steve) Rogers that I probably needed to get to the public works complex,” he said.

Within minutes after the storm hit, Walker and Franklin met Rogers at the foot of the Trenton Street bridge. They couldn’t get any further. There were too many trees, utility poles and power lines down.

Then Walker remembers getting a call from city fire Chief Chris Womack about the two fatalities. Walker couldn’t immediately get to Evans Street, either.

Meantime, Walker made it to the city’s public works facility south of town on East Tennessee Avenue. That’s where the electrical system monitoring equipment is housed.

At one point, as much as 80% of the city was without power.

Walker imposed a 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew, partially to allow utility crews to work unimpeded after dark. For the next several nights, National Guard helicopters flew over darkened shopping areas along the interstate.

Early on, the city tagged its losses at slightly more than $9 million, mostly to the electric system and fiber optic network.

Preliminary damages estimate for the Louisiana Tech campus was $20 million.

Ruston, the Lincoln Parish Police Jury, the parish fire district, and the Lincoln Parish Sheriff’s Office have recouped from FEMA their portion of public assistance expenses due.

Almost all that $4 million went to Ruston, Franklin said.

But “we’re stilling waiting on approval from FEMA for the hazard mitigation dollars that were tied to (the storm),” he said.

That’s almost $3 million, some of which will go toward hardening the city’s public works complex and the rest for emergency generators.

Franklin remembers worrying about major flooding in Ruston when, about a week after the tornado, heavy rain was forecast. Most of the city’s culverts and storm drains were still clogged with the debris.

“In every disaster there’s a domino effect,” he said.

By 5 p.m. the day after the tornado hit, 500 loads of debris had been taken to the Lincoln Parish landfill. That was only the beginning.

“We burned tons and tons of debris out there,” Franklin said.

Still, there’s tornado debris intentionally rotting in a pile behind the parish highway department.

Franklin said the city and parish learned “a lot of lessons” from the tornado. Chief among them: There’s now a better public emergency notification system.

Meantime, the city plans to repaint the faded capital letters on the smokestack that declare RUSTON from any direction you look. After all, the letters have been there since before 1930.

Walker said he wants people who look at the stack to remember the volunteers who helped literally pull the city out of the tornado’s rubble, and the spirit that came rising to the “Ruston Strong” slogan that popped up on t-shirts and elsewhere.

He hopes Thursday’s anniversary ceremony will be a point of healing, although he acknowledges memories of that morning five years ago are still poignant.

“I’m not sure you ever get to closure from something like this,” he said.