Just a day after they received disaster training, three Boy Scouts
rescued the caretaker and his family from their collapsed home at
Little Sioux Scout Ranch.
Nathan Dean, his wife and their three
children were trapped after a tornado tore through the 1,800 acre camp,
described as "very rustic" and "high adventure."
The three
Scouts - including Jesse Rothgeb of Millard - then broke into a shed,
took an All-Terrain Vehicle, some tools and headed out to cut through
branches and debris to reach the 50 to 60 Scouts and Scout leaders at
the north tower. There, they and other Scouts administered first aid to
the injured.
Scout leaders praised all the boys at the camp. People should be proud
of the boys, leaders said.
* * *
The Boy Scouts at Little Sioux Scout Ranch knew bad weather was on the
way, but they had no idea just how fierce the storm would be.
Omahan Noah Kochanowicz, 13, said he was outside when the weather
turned ominous.
"We were running around in the valley, then somebody was yelling,
'Look, a tornado,'" Noah said.
Sirens sounded, and the Scouts scrambled for shelter.
"As soon as we heard the sirens, we headed for shelter," said C.J.
Reid, 15, of Underwood Iowa.
C.J. said he and a group of Scouts sought shelter in a cabin to the
south of the camp, while another group of Scouts went to a cabin to the
north of the camp.
"I was lucky. The north cabin is the one
that got hit," C.J. said. None of the 50 to 60 campers in the south
cabin suffered serious injuries, he said.
Alex Robertson, 15,
of Center, Neb., was among the 50 or so people who ran to the north
cabin to escape the storm. He said he was on the floor inside the door
as the tornado hit.
"It ripped off the door, and it ripped open the roof," Alex said.
The wind dragged him to the wall of the cabin, he said, as he clung to
what little of the structure remained. A stone chimney was the next
thing to come apart in the cabin, he said.
"I saw the chimney come down right next to me. It fell on people,
unfortunately. It was very traumatic," Alex said.
In the aftermath of the tornado, the Scouts in the north cabin
scrambled to help those who were hurt and dig people out from under
debris. Alex said there were boys with broken collarbones, cracked ribs
and other serious injuries. The Scouts used their first-aid knowledge
to do what they could, he said, as they waited for help to arrive. Alex
distributed blankets to his fellow Scouts.
The wait was also excruciating for the Scouts who were in the south
cabin, and were largely uninjured.
"The entire building was flattened, and we could hear them calling for
help," C.J. said. We wanted to go help them but the leaders said we
couldn't because it wasn't safe."
The Scouts said that
generally everyone remained calm, and that they were proud of the first
aid they were able to provide for each other. C.J. praised one Council
Bluffs Scout in particular because he performed CPR on another Scout.
Video
Watch A.J. Losen's video
Alex said it "seemed like an eternity" before help arrived at the north
cabin. Once help did get there, the injured were sent off to hospitals,
while those to be reunited with their worried parents were taken to
West Harrison High School in Mondamin.
By midnight today, some
of the Scouts were still were sorting through the events of the day as
they left to go home with their parents.
"I don't really know what happened," said 14-year-old Matt Kreber of
Omaha. "I just looked up and I saw it coming down on us."
- Karen Sloan
* * *
A.J. Losen, a Millard West graduate who now attends the University of
Nebraska at Omaha, is a 20-year-old quarter master, in charge of all
the equipment at the camp. He took cell phone video footage of the
tornado for about 15 seconds before deciding he needed to get inside.
He said he isn't sure how he was able to keep his cool so he could work
his phone and capture footage of the tornado.
"We were standing there and the lightning was really picking up. The
ranger came over the radio and said there was rotation and we looked up
and saw a cloud rotating, " he said.
Losen was with Thomas White and about six other staff members.
The others went off to get the kids to shelters. Some went in and made
sure the tornado alarm was sounded.
"I was out there watching the rotation above the hill in the distance
and then a tornado came from behind the hill," he said.
Losen was about a quarter to a half mile from the hill. He filmed the
tornado then went to the administration building and took shelter in a
mop closet in the center of the building. The roof of the kitchen in
that building came off.
On his way to the mop closet, Losen said he looked out a window and saw
100-foot-tall trees being uprooted.
The wind was howling, there was an extreme pressure drop, his ears
popped and the air was sucked out of his lungs.
He was in the closet for several minutes. When it was over and he came
out, the sun was starting to come out.
"I was amazed at the response, emergency vehicles were lined up for a
mile," he said. "The response was very well organized. They seemed to
be on top of just about everything."
The ranger's house was flattened, he said.
- Jason Kuiper
* * *
Hal Emas of Omaha, 14, was in the building that was destroyed.
His mother, Leigh Emas, who teaches second grade at Sherman Elementary
in Omaha, said Hal is home sleeping. They got home about 2:30 a.m.
"He called from a borrowed cell phone to say about 7:10 p.m. a tornado
just came through and everything was gone," she said.
She dropped him off at camp Sunday morning. Hal is a Lifescout and is
working to be an Eagle Scout.
Leigh Emas said she saw storm spotters at Moorhead, Iowa, on television
and went to look at a map to see where it was in relation to the camp.
She and her older son were in the basement taking shelter.
"I
just had a bad feeling after looking up on a map to see how close
Moorhead was," she said. "I just had a really bad feeling."
After 20 minutes of worrying, Hal called.
"I didn't in my wildest dreams ever think it would have come right
through camp like it did," she said.
He was in a far corner of the cabin under a table holding onto a table
that was attached to the ground. She thought the table remained but the
walls and windows blew out. They saw a vehicle fly over the cabin and
it may have struck the chimney, causing the chimney to collapse onto
the kids.
Leigh Emas said she picked her son up at the
Missouri Valley Hospital, where he was taken as a precaution. She said
Hal was uninjured.
- Jason Kuiper
* * *
"We
were having a troop meeting at our headquarters pavilion . . . and
watching the rain and the lightning," said Paul Clark, 15, who was in
the campground's valley that was not hit by the tornado.
Just
as heavier ran was moving into the valley, Clark heard the tornado
sirens begin to wail. Everyone at the pavilion jumped up and ran to
nearby cabins for shelter, Clark said.
"There was people talking the whole time, so it wasn't too anxious for
us," he said.
Paul said he didn't know there were serious injuries and fatalities in
the other valley until his father told him around 1 a.m. when the two
were finally reunited inside at West Harrison High School.
- Tim Elfrink
* * *
"I remember it raining really hard before we went into the cabin for
shelter," said Scott Staver, 13, of Fremont.
Staver said he wasn't sure whether he was in the valley hard hit by the
tornado or not, although he noted that his cabin survived the storm
intact.
"They just told us to get to shelter so we all ran," he said. "It was
really loud, the thunder and the wind."
Scott waited hours at the rain-soaked camp with the other Scouts until
rescuers were able to take the boys to reunite with their families
early in the morning at West Harrison High School, as distant lightning
still flashed across the dark sky.
Scott's mother, Sheryl
Staver, said she didn't learn her son was safe until his name was read
around midnight in Nealy Hall in Little Sioux, where family members
gathered.
"You hear there were four deaths, and there's only
90-some boys in that group. That's one out of 25, you start thinking,"
Staver said, wiping tears from her eyes.
- Tim Elfrink
* * *
Brad Sundsboe, 17, student at Papillion-LaVista High School, and was a
Scout leader at the camp.
He was in the valley that was not hit by the tornado.
"We had heard earlier in the afternoon to expect tornadic weather, we
had been preparing for it all day, we had a plan to watch movies in the
shelters, and I was getting the movies ready when the storm blew in,"
he said.
The movies were Young Frankenstein and 007.
He was with his troop in the eastern part of the camp when he got a
call on his radio telling him to get everyone to shelter because a bad
storm was coming in.
"We were really lucky and it probably saved a few lives that we were
able to quickly get to shelter," he said.
The group that he was in charge of had to run about a quarter of a mile
to get to their shelter.
He jumped in the back of the line as kids ran toward the shelter and
helped drag a struggling Scout forward.
"Yeah, it was obvious this was going to be a bad storm, the wind was
unbelievable and we could see rotation," as they were running for
shelter.
He was put in charge of the group of Scouts when the adults learned
that there were injuries in the other valley.
Sundsboe's group spent about four hours in the shelter and at some
point a bulldozer arrived with food and water.
When he left the shelter, he saw trees down everywhere, but in his
valley most of the structures were intact.
His mother and father Delinda and Chris Sundsboe of Papillion didn't
find out that Brad was OK until nearly midnight when his name was read
at a hall in Little Sioux.
"We didn't want to drive up in the
bad weather so we had to wait in Papillion," his mother said, given a
report of a tornado heading toward Papillion. "When you hear there has
been fatalities, you just never know."
* * *
Alex Robertson is another Boy Scout who is lucky to be alive.
The 16-year-old from Center, Nebraska, was in the shelter hit hardest
by the tornado. He said the wind ripped off the roof and the door of
what he called the north shelter, before the chimney in the building
came crashing down.
"I saw the chimney come down. It fell on people. It was very
traumatic," said Robertson.
* * *
Jack Pape, 14, from Omaha, said he is on staff at the camp.
They were having dinner when they heard on the radio that storms were
coming. He and other staff went and the sounded the sirens.
"It was windy," and things were blowing around, he said, but he didn't
get hit by anything
The camp has a couple of shelters. Pape described the shelter he used
as a stone cottage.
He saw a pickup truck smashed into a chimney.
As he was searching for injured, he found one of the boys who was
killed. He checked the boy's pulse.
He said that while this was happening, he was thinking about the boys
he was responsible for.
"I did what I had to do," he said.
Tammy Wilson from Adair, Iowa, a mother of a scout, described how she
felt when she heard about what happened.
"Scared, worried, wondering if he was all right," as she walked with
her son to their car outside of the Mondamin, Iowa, High School. The
relief showed on her face.
* * *
Lt. Jeff Theulen of the Omaha Police Department said "it's destroyed up
there."
At least two buildings had been turned into piles of rubble and some
trees were chopped off at ground level.
The Omaha Police Helicopter will do an infared scan early this morning
but Theulen wasn't sure exactly why because officials already have said
that everyone is accounted for. He said it may just be as a precaution.
"We want to do it in the dark so we get the infared picture."
