THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, May 1, 1995 TAG: 9505010046
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE AND LARRY W. BROWN, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: Long : 110 lines
Severe storms with high winds ripped through Portsmouth, damaging homes and vehicles, tearing up trees and knocking down utility lines Sunday.
There were no reports of serious injuries, although about 100 apartments in the 3500 block of Westminister Ave. were evacuated when the storm touched off a large natural gas leak.
Power outages were scattered throughout Hampton Roads as a series of storms moved through Sunday afternoon and evening, but Portsmouth appeared to have been hit hardest.
City residents and police said funnel clouds were spotted Sunday afternoon in Churchland and the midcity area, although it was unclear if tornadoes actually touched down.
``The house vibrated and you could hear it shaking,'' said Kathryn Hill, 39, a nurse who said she saw a funnel cloud pass in front of her home in the 2200 block of Des Moines Ave. in Prentis Park. She fled to the safety of a windowless bathroom with her youngest son.
``It looked to me like it hit the tops of the trees. We didn't see it hit the ground,'' Hill said. ``It sounded like a train coming. It was very quick and short and when it stopped, there was nothing. Just a dead quiet.''
Hill was stunned when she emerged. ``Never have I seen this kind of devastation,'' she said, her voice still shaking.
All along her street, trees had been uprooted and toppled. Then she saw the wreckage of her shed in the front yard - a shed that had been in the back yard minutes earlier. It now hung from a neighbor's tree and astride a fence.
Surprisingly, everything that had been stored in it was still in the back yard, untouched.
``Nothing moved. The shed itself was just picked up and thrown,'' Hill said. ``It's amazing to me, like something you would see on TV.''
She said several trees in the area were uprooted, like one in a neighbor's yard: ``You could get a lot of people into the crater under that tree.''
G.A. Brown, a police spokesman, said damage reports came from all over the city but that the hardest-hit areas appeared to be the Prentis Park, Port Norfolk, Westhaven Park and Truxtun neighborhoods.
With so much widespread damage, extra personnel from neighboring cities were brought in to help Portsmouth police, fire and rescue crews.
The National Weather Service office in Wakefield said the severe storm line that moved through the city could have generated some small, short-lived funnel clouds. Until an inspection of the damage, however, it was not possible to confirm whether the damage was the result of a twister or just strong storm winds called ``microbursts.''
At the Westminster Village apartments, authorities said uprooted trees severed gas lines, forcing the evacuation of about 100 apartments. The complex was one of the most severely damaged areas, as numerous trees fell on buildings and cars.
``All of the cars were crushed,'' said Carolyn Whitehead, a resident. ``I've never seen anything like that.''
Whitehead and other shaken neighbors gathered at I.C. Norcom High School, where about 35 of the evacuated residents stayed. Others found refuge with friends and relatives. Most arrived at Norcom with just the clothes they'd been wearing and a few hastily gathered items.
Whitehead's daughter, Antoinette, had been sitting outside when the winds picked up.
``Everything started coming down, trees and all,'' Antoinette Whitehead said. ``The Lord spoke . . . loudly.''
Nellie Hoffler had just walked to her kitchen when a tree crashed through her front window into the room where she'd been relaxing.
``I'm glad I got up when I did,'' she said. ``All of my windows are out in the front. There was glass everywhere.''
As residents arrived, Red Cross volunteers took their names and telephone numbers and answered what questions they could.
Portsmouth Fire Marshal Thomas L. Laeser told some apartment residents that they would be able to go home to get a few items when the gas leak was contained, but they would be without power or water.
Bob Ossman, a Red Cross official, said residents could stay at the school for the night. ``We'll be feeding and making people as comfortable as we can,'' he said.
It was unclear when residents would be allowed to return home.
Power outages affected more than 6,000 customers in Portsmouth, including WAVY-TV, Channel 10, which operated with emergency power.
Utility crews were expected to work through the night, but because of the extensive line damage and the number of trees and limbs down, many customers were expected to remain in the dark into this morning.
Several storms moved through Hampton Roads on Sunday, hitting the region with drenching downpours and high winds.
In downtown Norfolk and Portsmouth, monsoon-like rains fell about 4 p.m., leaving some streets and low-lying intersections flooded. But while skies were an expected battleship gray to the east, the sun broke through clouds to the west.
A second wave of heavy rain accompanied by winds gusting to 50 mph swept through Hampton Roads just after 6 p.m. Trees bent, large trash cans tumbled, burglar alarms were set off and light poles vibrated as intense gusts carried sheets of rain to the ground. Visibility dropped to just a few hundred feet at the height of the storm.
In Virginia Beach's southern sections, storms felled trees and ripped down limbs throughout Creeds and Pungo. In Isle of Wight County, the Sheriff's Department reported 2-inch hailstones. ILLUSTRATION: Color staff photos by PAUL AIKEN
Markey Hill, 16, jumps over a downed tree, above, on Landsing Avenue
in Portsmouth on Sunday to follow his friend Lorenzo Chapman, 14.
Below, Cevel Wright looks at the storm-tossed shed of her neighbor,
Kathryn Hill, on Des Moines Avenue.
Color staff map by John Earle
[area shown] Hit hard by the storm\
KEYWORDS: STORM TORNADO HAMPTON ROADS by CNB