Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 5, 1993 TAG: 9306050467
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"We were standing on the stage and the tent started jumping," said Gary Stultz, a stagehand from Ferrum.
Suddenly, the stage - which they had been working on since 7 a.m. - fell over on them. Stultz and others had to climb out of the rubble. A stand of large speakers also collapsed under the gusts. Pieces of the stage were found in the stadium's fountain.
Pizza Hut vendors at one end of the stadium scurried about to remove tables from the tops of drink coolers and their collapsed canopies from the first several rows of seats in the stadium.
One worker required stitches after she was struck by canopy poles flying through the air.
Stuart Israel may have had the best spot - sitting atop a billboard at Lakeside Plaza - to see the storm roll in "like a tidal wave."
Minutes later, though, Israel, who had been sitting on the board since 6 a.m. to raise money for Trust, a Roanoke Valley crisis center, had scampered down and watched as the storm toppled his board.
"Everything was just blowing around," said Israel, the center's executive director. "We lost money; we lost supplies; we lost equipment."
He had raised $5,600 so far, not including the couple of hundred that blew away, he said. "It came through too fast."
Israel, who had planned to stay on the board until 6 p.m. Sunday, said he and others worked out of a van until about 11 p.m. Friday. They planned to return at 7 a.m. today.
"I think it's a done deal as far as the billboard goes," he said.
Pat Glowacki of Cumberland Street, Roanoke, was at Valley View Mall with her grandson when the clouds approached. For a moment, she wondered whether to stay in her car or run into the mall.
"All of a sudden it was like a drape over you," she said. The two waited in the mall.
She arrived home to find her electricity out, three trees down in her back yard and a fourth straddling a fence.
"It was like a twilight zone when I pulled up."
A.B. Broyles of the Vicker community off Virginia 114 in Montgomery County reported his rain gauge collected almost an inch of rain in a matter of minutes around 3 p.m. He also said hail in his yard was one inch in diameter.
Wayne Gray had just picked up his 4-year-old son, Travis, at the baby-sitter and was heading down Cambria Road in Christiansburg when the storm hit.
"I was just driving down the road and the trees were blowing like crazy," Gray said. "All of a sudden, kaboom!"
A maple tree came crashing down on his Honda Civic. Luckily both Gray and his son were able to crawl from the vehicle uninjured.
"We are just glad to be alive," Gray said. "I can't believe one of those limbs didn't come crashing through the window."
Tears in his eyes, Travis sat in his mother's lap unable to speak as a wrecker moved the tree off the family's only car.
In Fairlawn, a huge pine tree clipped the edge of Jesse Yates' home, leaving gaping holes in the house's ceiling.
But Ila Yates, his wife, kept a positive outlook.
"We're just counting our blessings that everyone's OK," she said.
She even had something nice to say about the pine tree: "It sure smells good."
The attic of an apartment building in Radford caught fire after it was struck by lightning.
Martin Roberts, Radford's first assistant fire chief, said the corner of one building at Bergen Pines Apartments on Sanford Street caught fire at about 2:50 pm. Thursday after lightning struck the corner of the eaves.
The fire was contained to the attic area of the building although two of eight apartments in the building did receive some water damage. Tenants were outside the building when fire crews arrived, Roberts said.
He estimated the damage at about $5,000.
In Christiansburg, traffic lights were dead, scattered power outages and downed power lines were reported along North Franklin, Roanoke and Main streets.
In Cambria, a woman was seen clinging to a tree about 5:20 p.m. until another motorist went to her aid.
At Scottie Pharmacy in downtown Christiansburg, pharmacist Pete Tolley and his staff were filling prescriptions and taking payments by flashlight about 6:15 p.m. Tolley said power had been out for about an hour.
About a block up the road, however, the Kroger store was lit up and full of shoppers.
A power line fell across North Franklin Street near WVVV-WJJJ, backing up evening rush hour traffic. The radio station went off the air about 5 p.m. and had no back-up generator.
Staff writers Ron Brown, Kathy Loan, Michael Stowe, Rob Freis, Donna Alvis-Banks, Kevin Kittredge, and Stephen Foster contributed information to this story
by CNB