Tornado paralyzes Newberry: 40 years later

NEWBERRY — On March 28, Newberry saw the 40 year anniversary of one of the worst natural disasters to pass through the town, county, and Carolinas as a whole.

“There was a tremendously dark cloud in the west, it was about darkest a cloud I’d ever seen,” said Sheriff Lee Foster. “All we knew was that there was going to be some unsettling weather coming through.”

Foster, along with others at the Sheriff’s Department, stood in the salley port watching the clouds. Tommy Longshore, the at the time Public Safety Director, pulled into the department parking lot, warning the department of what was coming.

“We had little to no sense, we stayed out in the salley port looking at the clouds. All of a sudden, the sky changed colors,” Foster said. “It went from that dark grey to an aqua-marine color. Then, it turned orange. The wind picked up and the temperature dropped.”

Somewhere else in Newberry, Mike Willingham and family listened to the radio talk about the brewing thunderstorm. As the sky changed colors, hail fell from the sky. According to Willingham, the wind was blowing so much that, despite its size, instead of falling straight down, the hail circled in the air as it fell.

“People always talk about golf-ball sized hail. There was a lot of hail that fell, it was big. It was pieces of hail fused together, it wasn’t perfectly round, just big chunks of ice,” Willingham said.

At Whitaker’s Floor Covering, the hail pounded the roof of the store. Some came inside to avoid, others saw what was coming and got out of dodge.

“It sounded like somebody was up there with a sledgehammer,” John Paul Whitaker said. “Someone brought in a piece of hail the size of baseball or softball.”

As soon as it started, the hail seemed to stop. For some, such as Mike Willingham’s wife, that split second break allowed them enough time to move. In her case, it gave her a few minutes to leave from underneath the Bank of America awning and pick up her kids from the daycare. As she passed by the bank, there was no longer an awning.

“We listened to the local radio. They said we had a thunderstorm coming,” Willingham said. “It wasn’t a tornado until it hit Newberry.”

The Tornado Epidemic

On Wednesday, March 24, 1984, at around 5:10 p.m., the first of many tornadoes to rip across the Carolinas touched down in the west end of Newberry. These were the worst tornadoes the two states had seen since the Enigma Outbreak in 1884, when around 60 tornadoes tore through the Southeastern United States.

The outbreak of 1984 saw a total of 24 tornadoes ranging from categories of F2s to F4s. A total of 57 people across the states were killed, with one fatality in Newberry. 1,248 people were injured, 38 of which were Newberrians. The F2 tornado that tore through downtown Newberry had winds up to 157 miles per hour, leaving downtown looking like a warzone, according to thousands of residents.

A second tornado, an F3 with winds up to 206 miles per hour, struck the county, closer to the Fairfeild County line. Between the two tornadoes, 254 houses were destroyed or damaged, alongside 86 businesses, 68 farm buildings, 45 manufactured homes and seven large public buildings. An estimated $11 million worth of damages were caused when all was said and done.

But as the F2 ran through downtown Newberry, it jumped over buildings. Witnesses say that as it moved east, it didn’t stay on the ground. Instead, the tornado jumped from building to building, hitting every other instead of every single building.

The Tornado Rips Through Downtown Newberry

“All of a sudden the tiles were gone and the roof was gone, just ripped right off,” said Whitaker, as he looked up at the store’s roof after the tornado. “It couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds, but it really felt like an hour. After it left, we looked up and we could see the sky and the place was wreck, just tore up.”

The store had been full with customers and employees, who all ducked down for cover as the tornado passed by Whitaker’s Floor Covering before jumping over the warehouse, striking another building instead. Witnesses told Whitaker and the Observer that as the roof was pulled off, paint cans and floor tiles were thrown into the air.

“This was a dance studio and there’s no doubt that God had a big hand in that,” Whitaker recounted. “You went down there and the only thing that was standing was the stairwell.”

Wilson Dance Studio, which was where the Hampton Inn now stands, was a building that was also full when the tornado landed. Instead of customers and employees, it was full of around 15 children who survived and were unharmed because of Peggy Wilson’s quick thinking.

“We had two calls that came out specifically,” said Foster, who was sent to Epting Automotive. On his way, he passed the dance studio. “I distinctly remember a lot of the building was gone, but the only thing that was there was that stairway, which was significantly intact.”

Just before the tornado struck the studio, Wilson gathered the group of student dancers underneath the stairwell. The building was leveled, reduced to rubble, but the class stood underneath the stairway, unharmed and safe, although very shaken up. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for where Sheriff Foster was sent to.

Across the street from the funeral home was Epting Automotive. It was one of the buildings that the tornado hit directly as it jumped from building to building. The building collapsed and trapped a few people in the store. According the Foster, at the time, they were not prepared to handle this level of devastation. With some outside the box thinking and help from the fire department, the people were extracted from the building, relatively okay. Christopher Epting died not long after being pulled out.

“40 years later, when I ride by Whitaker Funeral Home, I think about that place, and I think about Christopher Epting,” Foster said, remembering the man he attended High School with.

Aftermath

Across Newberry county, buildings were collapsed, partially collapsed, and/or roofless. Windows were shattered and bits of glass and full bricks were scattered across the devastated areas. Trees were ripped from the roots, tore in half, or branches thrown far away.

“It looked like someone took a 100ft wide bush hog and just mowed all the trees down,” Willingham said.

Willingham & Son’s Building Supply made it through the tornado unscathed, but from their store, they could see the damage that surrounded them. Trees criss-crossed over the roads, preventing those who were rushing home to check on their loved ones and property from doing so.

“When we looked up the road and saw trees laying in the road, my dad, John Willingham, and my brother, Jerry Willingham, got on our two backhoes and started pushing trees out of the way,” Willingham explained. “They went from the High School and up to Main Street, clearing the roads for people to drive up.”

Others, like Whitaker, didn’t wait for the roads to be cleared and rushed home on foot, jumping and climbing over felled trees and other debris. His worry for his wife, kids, and own home were enough to drive him on foot. No amount of debris was stopping him.

“It looked like a bomb had gone off,” said Whitaker. “Like a warzone, or how you imagine one.”

When he made it home, he found his family was safe and his house with minor damage. Moments before the tornado, when the curtains stood straight because of the wind, his wife got everyone into the hallway and away from the windows. Whitaker’s Floor Covering saw over $100,000 worth of damages, forcing them to operate out of their warehouse as they repaired the store. They never fully shut down, recognizing the need to work alongside other businesses to get Newberry back on its feet.

Willingham & Son’s Building Supply didn’t stop with the bush hogs. They also saw the need to help and began delivering plywood to businesses in order to help board up windows to keep the elements and potential looters out of stores and homes. The rebuilding of Newberry began faster than most expected.

Rebuilding

To help maintain order, safety, and help with rebuilding, the National Guard was sent to Newberry alongside the Salvation Army and Red Cross, who brought aid and food, including refrigerated trucks for perishable items.

“That was an eerie scene, to see military police officers and troops running traffic control points and restricting access to areas,” said Foster. “But they also brought engineers who helped move debris and clear roads. There were a lot of church groups that came in, and I remember some Amish came and helped dry houses and fix and repair them.”

The at the time Police Chief Andrew Shealy imposed an 8:30 p.m. curfew to help maintain order among the immense damage.

“After surveying the damage, we have no alternative but to enforce the curfew for everyone’s safety,” he told the Observer in the March 30, 1984 edition. A copy can be seen on the wall in the office of the Newberry Observer.

Despite the few scammers and cheaters that always emerge from natural disasters, the majority of Newberry proved, as they have time and time again, that they are the City of Friendly Folks. Residents and community members came together to help care for one another and work with the many organizations in Newberry to rebuild. According to the edition of the Observer that released two days after, Newberry started looking as if it “had returned to some semblance of a normal look, except for the visible damage to structures.”

“It’s amazing to me that despite the lack of specialized equipment, how we were able to go into a recovery phase so quickly and it be successful,” said Foster.

The scars of the tornado can still be seen today across downtown. At Whitaker’s Floor Coverings, there remains a clock that is still stopped at the time the power went out in Newberry, moments before the tornado. Some buildings have crooked signs and others no longer exist. If you look closely at some of the buildings in downtown Newberry, you can see the locations where the tornado left a scar, with newer bricks merging with older ones, giving the same slight discoloration that scars on the body leave.

Despite the tornado happening 40 years ago, the memories are still fresh in the minds of thousands of residents. Thousands have their own stories and experiences that remain untold, but all who were there remember the natural disaster that tore through Newberry and the Carolinas and the work it took to return to a normal life.

“I really cannot believe it’s been 40 years,” said Foster, Whitaker, Willingham, and the hundreds upon thousands of Newberrians who remember the tornado.