'The whole house just disintegrated around us'

Thomas Bunton waited Saturday with dozens of other tornado victims at Southwest Hospital while his 4-year-old daughter was treated in the emergency room.

She was all right but shaken up.

He and a neighbor had put her on an old bed and carried her out of the devastated Bennett Acres Trailer Park in Southwest Little Rock to the road because ambulances couldn't get into the park.

His older daughter, 16, and her boyfriend drove up their road in the middle of the storm, and a tree fell on their truck.

"I don't know how she is," Bunton said. "He is dead. I'm just happy I got my little girl in the bathtub."

Ambulances had trouble reaching victims through the wreckage, but by 6 p.m. the injured were pouring into area hospitals and shelters set up by the American Red Cross.

Dozens of homes in Southwest Little Rock and College Station were destroyed as residents huddled in bathrooms, basements, closets and hallways. Hundreds of trees fell, along with power lines, and broken gas lines hissed.

At a shelter at McClellan Community High School in Southwest Little Rock, a couple in their 50s, who declined to give their names, said they were watching the Razorbacks basketball game at home in the Woodland Ridge community at Geyer Springs and Hilaro Springs roads when the storm hit.

"I heard the sirens go off, and then heard a roaring sound," the man said. "My wife and I got on the staircase, and the whole house just disintegrated around us. I was able to pull myself out. My wife had a lot of building material on her, and it took me a while to get her out. Her foot is sore, but otherwise I think she's all right."

The woman told Red Cross workers that she heard the roaring sound as well but thought it was airplanes since the neighborhood is on one of the approaches to Little Rock National Airport, Adams Field.

"We got on the staircase, and the house was blown away," she said. "I could feel it was sucking him away from me. But I held on, and we were all right."

A Red Cross worker treated numerous cuts and abrasions on the man's arms and face.

In College Station, the worst damage was just north of College Street and Southern Road, where houses on an entire block near the community center and YMCA were leveled.

Cars were turned over; windshields and windows were shattered; huge trees were overturned, some with cars on top of them. Street signs and stop signs were bent over or gone. Bits of clothing and household furnishings hung over the rafters of destroyed homes.

About 6 p.m., people milled around the fire station, some with video cameras. Some asked about loved ones, but sheriff's deputies said all were accounted for.

"It was pouring down rain, and all at once we see glass flying," said Madison Peaster, 47, of 3719 Park Ave. "It was just five or 10 minutes, and then it was over."

Peaster pointed down one of the side streets, where an old green pickup had landed on a house where one person was confirmed killed. He said the parked truck had been thrown from a full block away.

"The only thing I can say is it's time for us to straighten up around here," said Shalonda Flowers, walking down Frazier Pike.

"We have 52 trees in our front yard. Not one of them is still standing," said Steve Osborne, whose trailer on Sandstone Drive in Southwest Little Rock was leveled by the storm.

"There's a lot of hurt people there, but the ambulances can't get in. My neighbor's little girl looked like she was hurt pretty bad; my neighbor is eight months pregnant and had a bloody nose, and they think that she broke a lot of these bones," he said, pointing to his collarbone and shoulders.

Osborne was hurt when what he thinks was his refrigerator fell on him as the tornado tore through his trailer.

"We knew that it was coming, and we tried to get out," he said. "But the truck wouldn't start. So, I took my wife and kids, and I put them near the bathroom, and I put a mattress over them, and we held on for dear life."

By about 4:30 p.m., Southwest Hospital's emergency waiting area was filled with children waiting for their parents and with adults waiting for loved ones -- people who drove in by themselves, all from Southwest Little Rock and the surrounding area. The adults wore dazed expressions, mud-stained faces and wet T-shirts. Children ran around screaming.

Tim Abbott of Pine Ridge Drive was at home when the tornado struck.

"I couldn't believe that it came in like that," he said. "The wind started getting real hard, and I got my momma and my daddy and my son, and we went into the hall. The next thing we knew, shrubs and glass were flying all over the place. And all of a sudden there was no shelter."

"My son has a big gash in his forehead, and the bone is sticking out of the meat of his arm," Abbott said. "The rest of my kinfolk are at Baptist. They were cut up pretty bad."

Abbott refused medical attention for abrasions on his arm after he reached Southwest Hospital.

"No one got to us," he said. "We got to them. We walked about a mile out of there."