23 Years Ago -- F5 Tornado Left Damage, Death in Its Wake

Three years ago, on the 20th anniversary of the tornado that marched through Plainfield, Crest Hill and Joliet and left massive death and damage in its wake, I wrote this story for Plainfield Patch. I'm republishing it here so we continue to remember those who lost their lives in the state's only F5 tornado.

By Karen Sorensen

The memories are as vivid as they are surreal.

The school bus flattened like a tin can. The Dumpster lodged at the top of a tree. The hill of destroyed autos stacked like so many toy Matchbox cars. The bonfire that burned for days, fueled by the lumber of homes deconstructed in seconds.

The F5 tornado arrived without warning at about 3:30 p.m. Aug. 28, 1990, emerging from what most assumed was a severe thunderstorm. No funnel was ever seen. Instead, the wall of wind marched across Plainfield like an invading army. In its wake, 29 people were left dead, 350 injured, 470 houses destroyed and more than $200 million in property damage, according to a report written by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

Twenty years later, residents who lived through it still find it hard to fathom. And the ultimate irony to some is that something so devastating had the unintentional effect of transforming Plainfield from a sleepy little town of 4,500 into a thriving Chicago suburb of more than 37,000.

"I remember the (former) mayor talking at a chamber function and saying, oddly enough, that the tornado put Plainfield on the map," says David Nurczyk, 39, whose videos of the aftermath can be seen on YouTube. "The town went from negative population growth and being nothing to brag about, and by 1995 it was booming."

The tornado, with winds of up to 260 mph, needed just eight minutes to cut a 16-mile swath from Wheatland Township through Plainfield to Crest Hill and Joliet. It was an unusual storm in that it grew so quickly after touching down in Pecatonica, near Rockford, stayed on the ground for so long and came wrapped in a sheet of hail and rain, National Weather Service officials say.

Sophisticated Doppler radar, known as Nexrad, might have told meteorologists the storm was capable of spawning tornadoes, but it wasn't available at the time. Warning sirens that could have sent more people to find shelter weren't activated. A tornado warning for Will County was issued 15 minutes after the storm had already plowed through Crest Hill, according to an account in "Black Sky: Plainfield Tornado, August 28, 1990," published by the Plainfield Public Library in 2000.

"It was just like a bomb hit," says Jerry Taylor, 72, who owned an auto parts store on Lockport Street at the time. "I've never seen anything like it, and I hope I never do again."

The worst of the storm struck just three blocks away from Taylor's store, yet he did not hear the destruction or the telltale "freight train" sound even as it wiped out Plainfield High School.

Taylor was watching the storm as it moved into town, and when golf ball-sized hail started to fall, he decided to move his new truck into the store's garage bay, he says.

"The sky was a kind of greenish, orange-ish color, and when I saw (things) flying horizontal in the wind, I knew it was the worst storm I'd ever seen," he says. "I didn't know where to go."

His store was full of items that could inflict serious injury if picked up by the wind, so Taylor dived for the only place that offered cover – beneath his truck.

"All I could really hear was windows breaking," he says.

When he emerged following the storm, a huge chunk of what had been a business three blocks away had landed at his front door, he says. What Taylor's daughter describes as a "huge sliver" had been driven through the store's roof.

At the time, Linda Taylor was a 20-year-old student at Joliet Junior College. She says she watched the storm from the front picture window of the family's home on Route 59 near Route 126, struck by the odd silence despite seeing trees being bent in half by the wind. She had no idea at the time that people were being killed or that her former high school or other buildings, including St. Mary Immaculate Church and School, a strip shopping center, a grocery store and dozens of homes, were being leveled, she says.

"Less than five minutes (after the storm had passed), the sun came out and all was right with the world," she says.

She learned the extent of the destruction when her father came racing home to see if she was OK, she says. When he headed back out to see what he could do to help, Linda climbed on her bike and rode around town to see things firsthand, she says.

"It was really quiet and creepy," she says. "Route 59 was a really busy street, even then, but there was very little traffic. … It was kind of weird to go by the high school. I went to school there, but it wasn't really there anymore."

If Linda Taylor moved through the scene in a state of detached shock, her younger brother was near-panic-stricken when he got the news at Illinois State University in Normal, where he was going to school.

"A friend of mine came to my room and said, 'My mom wants to talk to you,' " says Roy Taylor, 39, who documented his account on his Web site, roytaylor.info. "That was weird in and of itself. Then she said, 'Roy, did you know Plainfield just got destroyed by a tornado?'

"She said a lot of large buildings had been destroyed. My house was near the grain elevator and water tower, and immediately my mind started racing," he says.

He called everyone he knew, and finally got his sister on the phone, he says. Despite being assured his family was fine, he felt compelled to come home. What he saw, he says, was "mind-boggling."

"There was an enormous bonfire, burning all those people's houses," he says. "That struck me as surreal. … I remember looking over toward where the high school was and seeing a big open area. That was crazy."

It was "just the little things that were so shocking," says Nurczyk, who came home from Southern Illinois University over Labor Day weekend and decided to document the damage with a video camera.

One of Nurczyk's most vivid memories was the pile of mangled autos and trucks stacked on an empty field behind Louis Joliet Mall in Joliet, he says. Roy Taylor says he remembers there were cars and trucks all over with flat tires from the thousands of house nails that littered the streets.

The storm lives on in the memories of the two men. Every time the weather turns bad, they remember. They know not to take anything for granted, they say.

"Let's just say I have a heightened awareness of just how vulnerable you are, how bad things quickly can get," Nurczyk says.