Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
It should have been a simple cross-country drive, but a quartet of School District 55 transportation employees got a lot more adventure than they bargained for as they drove four new school buses back from Detroit, Mich.
Trainer Deborah Maskal, mechanic Darin Dixon and bus drivers Trinity Yoder and Terrie Miller flew to Detroit on March 26, the beginning of Spring Break, and returned with four small specialty buses in the beginning of April after a harrowing encounter with a swarm of tornados.
The drivers picked up the buses at the airport in Detroit and took Interstate 80 all the way back to Oregon, traveling through Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah and Idaho, approximately 2,300 miles.
“Our concern was the longevity of the buses,” Maskal said. Rather than paying someone else to deliver the buses, the district sent its own drivers to make sure the buses were broken in correctly.
The drivers had to deal with two major traffic accidents, a bridge closed down after a truck that was too big for it failed to make it through, a blizzard and tornados.
“We hit a lot of weather types, nothing as bad as the tornados,” Maskal said. The best part of the trip, she said, was “seeing that Oregon border.”
After all the crazy weather and crazy drivers in other states, she said, “Oregon’s roads are better. It’s cleaner. Oregon is one of the most beautiful states there is.”
The trip got rough near Ogallala, in western Nebraska.
“It was just after dark,” Maskal said. “We had just fueled up. We knew there was a storm coming in.”
While at the gas station, the drivers heard a tornado warning on a radio, Maskal said. She stopped, listened and then asked an employee at the gas station about it.
“So she says, ‘go that way. It’s already been that way. You’ll be fine,'” Maskal recalled. “We hadn’t gone five miles, and Trinity says, ‘We don’t have to worry till it hails.’ Instantly, the hail started.”
Maskal had been watching the skies, which were dark, she said. Against the dim light of the background and lightning, “you could just see that big V of the tornado dropping.” It was a black shadow, like the clouds above, descending.
She saw one funnel dropping to the southwest, forward and left from her bus, and a much larger one dropping to the southeast, left and behind her bus.
Driving along, every time the lightning flashed, Dixon could see a tornado hanging off the side of the freeway, he said. “The closer we got, the faster it go, the lightning crashing all around us.”
“About then we got hit from the north,” Maskal said. The wind was pushing them off the road.
Dixon saw a flash of green light, and then “it was just a blast of hail and sagebrush and hanging on for the ride,” he said.
“We watched a big 18-wheeler roll like a tin can in front of us,” Maskal said. Dixon and Yoder were in front of her. “I thought it was going to hit Trinity.”
Maskal and Miller stopped under an overpass.
“We were apparently very close to the eye of the tornado (an F1),” Maskal said. Dixon and Yoder went on past the overpass.
As they went under the overpass, the wind hit Dixon and Yoder from one direction, Dixon said. As they exited, the wind hit them from the other direction, leading them to theorize that a third tornado had touched down directly above them on the overpass.
Dixon and Yoder kept moving, Maskal said. If they had stopped, the wind would have pushed their buses over.
For a few minutes, Maskal was unable to reach Dixon or Yoder by cell phone or radio, but she did call her boss, Transportation Supervisor L.D. Ellison.
She told him they were “in a tornado,” Ellison recounted. “I said, ‘Where are you?’
“‘I don’t know where Trinity and Darin are.
“‘Where are you?
“‘Under an overpass.
“‘Where’s Terrie?
“‘Right behind me.
“‘Don’t move. You’ll catch up.'”
Under the overpass, it was “dead quiet,” Maskal said. She doesn’t know if she just blanked out the noise or whether that’s something to do with the tornado. The storm gave off an orange glow, something they found out later is common around tornados.
Winds were estimated at 90 to 100 mph, Dixon said.
Dixon and Yoder stopped at the next exit, got on their cell phones and called back to Maskal and Miller.
It turns out that the four were in one of the busier parts of the storm, Maskal said. A total of 27 tornados touched down, according to news reports.
“It did draw us together as friends,” Maskal said. “It still frightens me.”
The terrifying incident reminded her of what’s important, her family, she said.
“I make sure now, and I don’t forget to tell them I love them.”
She has 16 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, she said. “I’m just not ready to part with them. It just made them that much more precious.”
“I know I won’t be ready (to drive through tornado country) for awhile. I just thank God that I had who I had with me and the boss was home to answer the phone.”
Being in the dark with tornados all around was a spooky situation, Dixon said. “It scared all of us pretty good.”
Catching during practice with his son’s baseball team, Dixon recently looked at some dark and angry clouds gathered over Mark’s Ridge, he said. He found himself watching those more than playing ball. They weren’t the kind of clouds he would have given a second thought before this trip.
The tornados were scary, he said, but he would make the drive again.
The day after the tornados, the group set out again, but their trip was cut short by a blizzard, Maskal said. They had traveled just 57 miles and could go no further. This problem, though, wasn’t anywhere near as dangerous as a tornado.
“We still weren’t ready to do much,” Maskal said. “We were pretty apprehensive.”
The next weather problem actually gave them some time to relax following their harrowing experience.
“I’d never seen anyone lock up a freeway before,” Maskal said, after the blizzard shut down the freeway and forced them to spend the day in Sidney, Neb. (pop. 6,010), before moving on.
The new buses are four of the 11 that the School District is purchasing this year. District drivers will retrieve the final seven buses in June, ideally with a lot less excitement.