Storm sweeps 'shoes right off their feet'

MENA — The Order of the Eastern Star was conducting its regular lodge meeting when the sirens sounded. Before members could find cover, a tornado peeled away the roof with winds so strong that some women had their shoes ripped off their feet.

"I was down on the floor - I just flattened," said Thurman Allen, 79.

The Thursday night tornado at Mena killed three and injured 30. At the Dallas Masonic Lodge on Hamilton Street, 19 people were gathered for the order's twice-monthly meeting when the ceiling collapsed. A woman was killed - her body recovered after emergency workers cut part of the roof away.

Allen said that, as the tornado hit the lodge, debris hit him in the head and knocked him to the ground. His wife, sitting nearby in a chair, was thrown to the floor. The storm knocked over the lodge's cinder block wall, triggering a shower of wooden joists, insulation and shingles.

"We had some ladies that it took the shoes right off their feet," said Fred Key, 37, as he scoured wreckage for lodge records that date to the 1800s.

Daylight exposed a community ripped apart. Century-old pecan trees leaned into homes - some with pink insulation strung from their limbs. Along some streets, roofs had collapsed into homes. On other streets, roofs were simply gone.

Marion Boyt, 76, said one of the people killed by the storm died in a two-story home where the roof fell in. He survived after rushing into a small closet with his son and daughter-in-law.

"I guess we got skinny because we were so scared," Boyt said.

The storm toppled a large maple tree onto his one-story ranch home. In a study, a piece of wooden debris penetrated a wall and stuck two feet into his study. Boyt's new metal shed was tossed into a neighbor's yard.

At the collapsed home, a closet full of women's clothes, including dresses and a beige blazer, sat atop an exposed mattress. The clothes were only slightly wrinkled and still hung on the closet's rack. True Crime magazines were strewn over the rubble.

Mike Hobson, principal of Mena Middle School, said his building sustained significant roof damage. Hobson said one portable classroom was destroyed and that part of the auditorium's roof was ripped away, letting shredded insulation cover the seats inside.

Hobson said the school, which has about 480 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students, would need to be examined before a decision was made on when classes can resume. Two custodians and a mother of a custodian were at the school when the storm hit and "rode it out" in a guidance counselor's office.

"It's like Dorothy and Toto," Hobson said.

Richard Bagwal was at home in Mena with his wife, Brenda, and their 13-year-old son, Cody, and said the storm went directly over their home as they huddled under blankets.

"The house was just vibrating and rocking. There was debris flying everywhere. Insulation just filled the house. The wind was unreal," he told ABC's "Good Morning America" by telephone. After the storm ripped off the home's roof, the Bagwal's remained in their home.

"We're kind of like camping out in our house, you know, watching the stars and listening to the wind blow. We're outdoors people. So, you know, we just cleaned out a spot and decided to camp out for the night," he said.