Flash player is required to view weather conditions. Download

COMMENTARY

A memory of disaster still haunts

It was 30 years ago today that I responded to Xenia after that killer tornado ripped through Greene County — the worst natural disaster in our area since the 1913 flood.

I spent a traumatic night there, returning to the Dayton Daily News offices downtown in time to write the front-page story that appeared in our newspaper April 4, 1974. I composed the story, as we all did in those days, on a typewriter. And the newspaper that carried the story cost a dime.

Times have changed. But memories of that terrible night will remain forever.

Six years after the tornado, I was in our same newsroom one afternoon when the skies grew dark, and a tornado alert was issued and damaging winds were tearing at the Miami Valley.

When the weather alert became fever in our city room, for some reason I rather impulsively began making notes. I wrote a column quoting from my raw notes, trying to give readers a hint of what it is like on this job when tragedy hovers.

On this grim anniversary, I would like to repeat a portion of that column for the new generation of readers:

A curious thing happens in the newsroom. People walk faster. Blood flows quicker through the bodies. Voices are pitched a trace higher.

There is little laughter. There is pure professionalism. The waiting. The searching for word.

It is reporters and staff members calling loved ones at home. There are hushed tones telling those on the phone to be prepared, but not to be scared. The word that supper will have to wait tonight. That this will be one of those nights.

It is a gathering around a weather station radio, listening for that first word that what has been feared, is now reality. That nature's force has struck. That human lives may be in the balance.

Nervous confusion confounds the newsroom. Reporters grab notebooks and photographers load up equipment and head off to see what is there.

Those behind walk around, asking for more information, manning phones, waiting, thirsting, hoping the big wind will blow over.

There are quick meetings of editors. Plans are being made for coverage all night long. Static electricity is in the air. In the background, through it all, the droning voice of the weather bureau spokesman on the radio is leading, and we are following.

Phones ring at every desk. I answer one. "Yes, lady, there is a warning. No, lady, there are no reported touchdowns. Yes, lady, there is a chance. Yes, it is wise to take cover. Well, God bless you too, lady."

I keep thinking that it seems like history repeating. First the calls, the reports, the questions, the weather bureau, the police radio and then the stark reality. A town was gone . . . people were dead . . . and life would never be the same in Xenia.

It is a nervous combination of fear and remembering, by those of us who will carry to our graves vivid memories of that night in 1974.

I was there. I heard the crying. I saw the eerie shadows of destroyed homes in the dark of night, the kitchen curtains blowing where windows were no more.

I saw trucks overturned and trees uprooted and people rushing, both for help, and to help.

Most of all I saw people beyond help. They were lying in a row, in front of a carryout, in the center of town, sheets over their bodies. I saw a mother run up and pull back the sheets, frantically, one by one, and then finding her 19-year-old son, and kneeling over the body and hopelessly caressing.

I was there. Many of us were. I remember. Xenia remembers.

And I think, a day like this for us, must be pure hell for them.

Dale Huffman wants your suggestions and story ideas. Send an e-mail to Dale at dhuffman@

DaytonDailyNews.com or write to him at 45 S. Ludlow St., Dayton, OH 45402. Fax: 225-2489. Phone: 225-2272.