Rare Tornado Devastates Downtown Salt Lake City

SALT LAKE CITY — A tornado’s dark funnel cloud stalked downtown and descended during the noontime rush Wednesday, killing one person and injuring hundreds as it zigzagged an unlikely path through the heart of the city.

The twister came as a total surprise in this valley, which lies on the other side of the Rocky Mountains from so-called Tornado Alley. Winds up to 110 mph tossed vehicles, ripped trees apart and laid waste to two 10,000-square-foot tents set up for a convention of 15,000 retailers at the Salt Palace Convention Center. The fatality occurred in the tent area.

Officials said 70 people were treated at hospitals, including one man struck by lightning and two people in critical condition. More than 100 were treated at the scene for minor injuries.

The winds rocked towering cranes, which are a common sight here as construction crews prepare for the city to host the 2000 Winter Olympic Games. They skirted the gold-domed state Capitol, uprooting scores of venerable shade trees in one of the city’s finest neighborhoods. One crane collapsed at a site where a church assembly building is being erected, and workers reported seeing two portable toilets flying through the sky.

Late Wednesday, city authorities counted 121 damaged homes, 34 of them uninhabitable, and there was major damage to large downtown structures.

Utah averages only two tornadoes a year. The last one to hit Salt Lake City occurred in 1968.

Although a severe thunderstorm warning had been issued seven minutes before the funnel cloud touched down about 12:55 p.m. MDT, the only precursor to the twister was a sudden and dramatic darkening of the sky.

Witnesses on the ground were caught unaware. Some thought the changing weather suggested an afternoon storm, a common summer weather pattern.

In moments it became clear that this was no average storm. One man, a conventioneer from New Orleans, said he literally outran the twister, finding shelter in a building.

“They said, ‘Get out now--run, run, tornado!’ ” Chuck Sheldon, who had been in the tented area, told CNN. “You could see it, the sky was filled with it, there was debris up in it, you could hear it. So we ran like cattle, as fast as we could.”

Ryan Lee watched the tornado approach from the 19th floor of a downtown office building.

“We saw this off in the distance and didn’t pay attention until it got really dark,” he said in an interview on the MSNBC television channel. “We could see transformers arcing. Major arcs and flashes. It turned north and east and hit downtown. We saw it pulling part of the roof off the convention center. Unfortunately, we saw it continue and hit the tents at the outdoor retailers’ [meeting]. It shredded them apart.”

Demetri and Kim Coupounas had just set up their exhibit to launch a new business in climbing gear. “People were looking up at amazing clouds. They began to swirl. It was incredibly beautiful,” she said. “Then there was a piercing scream--a woman yelling, ‘Tornado!’ ”

The couple and others punched through plastic tent material and took shelter under some steps. “There was a roaring, a creaking and a banging--really loud,” Demetri Coupounas said. “Then total silence.” People everywhere were cut by flying glass and merchandise--mostly high-tech outdoor gear.

When they emerged, they found that their friend Allen Crandy, 38, of Las Vegas, had been crushed under a steel beam. They joined a group that managed eventually to lift the beam, but Crandy was dead. The Coupounases’ booth was the only one untouched by the fury.

“It’s so bizarre,” she said of the capriciousness of the wind. “This thing took a path through the most flimsy structure in the city.”

Nearby, windows imploded at the Wyndham Hotel, where curtains could be seen flapping from the empty windows of guest rooms. The guests were evacuated and a center for assessing severity of injuries was quickly assembled in the lobby.

Nichole Moody, working on the fourth floor of the Triad Center high-rise, first spotted the storm in the reflection of the office building. “At first I thought it was cool. I didn’t know it was a tornado,” she told the Deseret News. “Then I saw a chunk of the Delta Center roof fly by.”

Heavy hail fell in the tornado’s path as it swirled away from the city center and headed through the Capitol Hill and Avenues neighborhoods to the east. All told, the twister was on the ground for about 1 1/2 miles, and its path was 300 yards wide at some points, meteorologists said.

The extended forecast called for rain and thundershowers.

Most of the damage was confined to a two-block area downtown, where many of the state’s major tourist attractions are grouped, including the Delta Center, where the NBA’s Utah Jazz play, and a handful of historic buildings associated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Structures in the church’s Temple Square were not damaged.

The Delta Center’s roof and siding were damaged. David Gross witnessed the damage to the large sports arena. “I saw billowing black smoke, heard the thunder and wind, and then the roof opened.”

As emergency crews converged to lend aid, the modern downtown cityscape offered a frenzied scene as rescue helicopters settled down on glass-littered streets to remove the injured.

Emergency personnel searched among debris in office buildings for survivors. Search dogs stepped gingerly amid the tattered remains of the outdoor market.

Around the city there were reports of gas leaks, power outages and disruptions in telephone service. Power lines that managed to stay aloft sagged under the weight of debris.

Along one avenue near the convention center, utility poles were blown sideways, like so many tall toothpicks. Bricks from historic territorial buildings rained down on cars. Debris was deposited at random: A kitchen stove was sitting in a street next to a child’s doll.

“In all my years in Salt Lake City I’ve never seen anything like it,” Mayor Dee Dee Corradini said.

Late in the day after flying over the destruction, Gov. Mike Leavitt declared the stricken blocks a disaster area.

President Clinton said officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency were already on the ground and more were on the way to help local officials.

The Utah Highway Patrol shut down all major roads into downtown because of traffic congestion and debris. A sheriff’s deputy said a few looters tried to go through the spoiled merchandise but were chased way; no arrests were reported.

In recent years tornadoes have touched down in a number of major cities, including Oklahoma City, Nashville and Miami.

The afternoon’s carnage was the latest evidence of odd weather patterns affecting different parts of the country this summer. While parts of the Middle Atlantic and New England are suffering through the worst drought in a century, the middle of the country and the Rocky Mountains have been unusually rainy and California is experiencing an unseasonably cool summer, according to climate experts.

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Tornado Hits Salt Lake City

A tornado tore through downtown Salt Lake City, blowing out windows at the Wyndham Hotel and damaging the Delta Center and Salt Palace Convention Center.