Although the Hannibal area missed the worst of Sunday morning’s storms, in which at least 16 people died in Southwestern Missouri and Oklahoma, strong winds uprooted many trees in Hannibal, and several fell across houses. No injuries were reported, according to the police.
Ten or more people were killed in the area of Seneca, according to the State Emergency Management Agency, and another six died when a tornado flattened the northeastern Oklahoma town of Picher.
One of the Hannibal families with trees across their roofs heard a loud crash at about 4:30 a.m. Sunday, and also heard glass breaking.
“I thought it was an earthquake or a tornado,” said Patty Voepel of the sound she and her husband, Ron, and daughters, Courtney and Whitney heard. “The kids were running out of their rooms yelling.”
The crash didn’t wake her, Patty said, because the storm had already awakened her and the power was off. “I was awake. I was waiting for something to happen,” she said
A big oak tree fell across their house at 8935 Route W, which about a mile west of Veterans Elementary School.
“We didn’t have power,” she added. “We had cellphone lights, and we just knew there was a tree on the house, but we couldn’t see how much damage there was.” They noticed the neighbors were also in the dark.
The tree caused a broken window in the family room on the first level of the house. When the tree fell on the roof, some of its limbs fell on another tree and knocked some limbs down. One of these from the second tree “went under the deck and shot through the window and busted the whole thing out, bottom and top,” Patty said. “We went down, but we couldn’t see anything. We thought about leaving but we decided to stay.”
On Sunday they were awaiting the arrival of insurance adjustors, she said. “We can’t tell how much roof damage we have. The gutters and soffits are down, but there is no big hole in the roof that we can see.”
As they consider the outcome of the storm, Patty said, “it makes us want to start cutting down trees.”
A very large maple tree fell across a house at the northeast corner of North Hawkins and Hill streets, across from the playground at Mark Twain Elementary School, tearing up the front part of the roof.
These two houses were among several in Hannibal where the residents were surprised by a tree crashing across their roofs.
In response to the many broken tree limbs and downed trees across Hannibal, on Sunday city officials opened the city’s yard waste lot at South Seventh Street and Warren Barrett Drive.
“The lot will be open all week,” said Leon Wallace, Hannibal street superintendent. The lot will be open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. for the convenience of the people cleaning up their property, he said. Only tree limbs and yard waste are to be taken to the lot.
On Sunday city crews had been busy since 4 a.m. removing trees that were blocking or partially blocking city streets at more than 15 locations all over Hannibal, Wallace said. “This is the most trees down in quite awhile.”
Street department crews were not hauling away the trees they removed from the streets, but they will return to do this later, he said. “When they have a storm like this, we cut it and pile it into people’s yards, and it will take us all week to get everything picked up. We will be working on that starting in the morning (today).”
The streets block or partially blocked by trees were Flora, Westover, Belleview, two locations on Pleasant, South Arch, Ely, Ruby, Warren Barrett Drive, Perkins, Euclid, South Tenth, Helen, Settles, Valley and D’Ville.
Despite this number of streets having tree limbs across them, Wallace had heard of only one vehicle being damaged by a falling tree. It was on Fair Oaks.
One huge fallen tree barely missed the historic Fannie Griffin Art Club building. Joy Brown of 1901 Settles St. explained a “very healthy” oak tree was uprooted and “just missed the building. It covered the whole lot. They are very, very lucky.
“The tree roots were very much alive,” she said, so the wind had to be extremely strong to uproot the tree. She heard the tree crash between 3 and 4 a.m. Sunday, she said.
“It scared me. It sounded like it was so close to my house. I was waiting for the impact, and it didn’t come. I was grateful for that.”
When the tree fell, Brown said, “lightning was just flashing all through the house. ...We have not seen anything like this for years. This hole (the tree was in) is just huge” and is higher than her height.
The Hannibal Fire Department was called to the scene, because a portion of gas line was exposed in the hole left by the uprooted tree fell over. Firefighters reported nothing was broken on the gas line but they contacted the gas company.
One-third of Hannibal left in the dark
Numerous power outages were caused by falling trees or tree limbs during the storm.
Ray Zumwalt, assistant line superintendent with the Hannibal Board of Public Works, reported approximately 3,500 of Hannibal’s 9,000 electric customers had power outages during the storm. Some lasted longer than others, he added.
“It started at about 4 (a.m.) and we had most of it back on by 10 o’clock,” he said Sunday afternoon.
“A few had to get electricians." “We lost the big transformer on Ford Street,” which is off Central Avenue, he said. This left about 2,600 meters off, from Grand Avenue to McMasters’ Avenue and beyond for a little more than an hour, Zumwalt said.
Also substations in Oakwood and on South Side were blinking, he said. “We probably a lot of people who were affected.”
In addition to these, he said, “individuals had service down. We had probably 15 services off in houses from tree limbs.”
Zumwalt was surprised at how strong the wind was when he was driving to check the BPW’s computer system at around 4:30 a.m. Sunday. “It almost blew my truck off the road,” he said. “I thought sure it was going to blowme off the road. That wind was blowing about as hard as I’ve seen it blow.”
This strong wind would have caused much more damage, Zumwalt added, except for the city’s tree trimming program. “We have a real good tree program and it has really helped the City of Hannibal. The guys have done a good job trimming trees.”
Replacing light poles has also helped, he said. “We have changed out most of the bad poles in the city. The telephone company had three poles down, but we didn’t have any down.”
Zumwalt complimented his employees’ quick response to the power outages. “I had six people out working - three crews. They did a great job. They worked hard and stayed with it.
“It was quite a job and I’m really proud of our guys who got out there. When you are in a bucket, and the wind is blowing you around, its hard to hang on.”
Information about the tornadoes was provided by the Associated Press.
