The subdivision wiped out by the tornado has been transformed into a park with a storm shelter and a memorial for those who died. The land for the park was donated by Louis Igo, who lost five family members in the tornado.
For some, it may be harder to forget the tornado when they leave Jarrell than it is when they are home. A lot of people in other parts of the state have not heard of the small Williamson County town in any context other than the F–5 tornado that killed 27 people 10 years ago.
It’s not that people in Jarrell are dedicated to forgetting what happened that day. That would be impossible. But the town has gone about the business of getting on with its collective life in the aftermath of a tragedy that brought national attention and a horde of print and broadcast journalists to the little town.
“It’s a part of our history that we will never forget but the tornado is not what defines Jarrell today,” Jarrell mayor Wayne Cavalier said.
The town has changed a lot in the last 10 years. The city incorporated in 2001. A new wastewater system is being installed and a new police station is under construction. The town has a subdivision, Sonterra, with a couple more planned. A new high school is scheduled to open this fall.
“After the tornado it became important for us to maintain and retain the values that brought people here in the first place,” Cavalier said. “This has always been a family–oriented, family–friendly place, and we’ve worked hard to keep that intact even as the city keeps growing.”
The city will not hold a formal memorial service to mark the 10th anniversary of the tornado.
“There is a sense within the community that we will remember on an individual basis rather than as a community,” Cavalier said.
The memories are as varied and as deep as the people who carry them. From the almost incomprehensible horror the tornado wrought to the coming together of a community to begin the healing and rebuilding process, the memories are there. They won’t go away, but the people of Jarrell are getting on with their lives, shattered as they may have been on that muggy May afternoon when the sky seemed to rain tornadoes all over Central Texas.
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The series of storms that shook Central Texas that day happened the same way they happen every spring, but with an intensity hard to imagine. Warm, moist air out of the Gulf of Mexico collided with a cold front moving into Texas from the north. When the two weather systems met over Central Texas that afternoon, the sky exploded.
By the end of the day as many as 10 tornadoes had been confirmed in Central Texas, from McLennan County south to Bell and Williamson counties and into the Hill Country west of Lake Travis.
Lon Curtis, a meteorologist with KWTX Channel 10 in Waco since 1998, was an avid storm chaser and an assistant Bell County district attorney in 1997. On May 27 he followed the string of tornadoes from McLennan into Williamson County.
What would become the Jarrell tornado was the seventh tornado he spotted that day. The sixth, near Prairie Dell, is generally considered the starting point of the Jarrell tornado. Curtis said they were two separate tornadoes, though their appearance on the ground was separated by mere seconds.
“I have no doubt about it,” he said. “They were two separate tornadoes. I was there and saw it, and I later saw footage that showed the Prairie Dell tornado dissipating. After the storm you could go there and see an area about half a mile to three–quarters of a mile where there was no damage.
“The second tornado, the one that became the Jarrell tornado, formed about five seconds after the one at Prairie Dell dissipated.”
The Jarrell storm formed as a multivortex tornado, a tornado that contains several vortices rotating around and inside of the main tornado. Most reports of several tornadoes coming together to form a single tornado are actually multivortex tornadoes, Curtis said.
This one moved into Williamson County across open country then took a fateful turn to the southwest, moving toward the northwestern edge of Jarrell, ripping asphalt from the county roads in its path and tearing grass and dirt from the ground a foot–and–a–half deep.
The tornado got bigger as it swept toward Jarrell. Curtis called the Jarrell Volunteer Fire Department to report that a large tornado was bearing down on their town.
“I was besides myself with concern that it was going right into downtown Jarrell,” Curtis said. “As we know now, it changed direction and moved into Double Creek Estates. I was actually relieved at the time. You couldn’t see Double Creek from where I was. It was over a little hill. I didn’t know there was anything over there at the time.”
By the time the tornado hit the Double Creek Estates subdivision the tornado was as strong as tornadoes get, packing winds of more than 300 miles per hour. In a matter of seconds, the entire subdivision was reduced to rubble and 27 people were dead, 13 of them school–age children.
All that was left of the houses in Double Creek Estates were bare slabs; even floor tiles were sucked into the sky. Telephone poles were broken in half like pencils. Cars became airborne missiles, hurtled hundreds of yards by the 300–mile per hour swirling winds.
Sgt. Mike Perry of the Temple Salvation Army said it was the “most God–awful thing” he had ever seen.
“It resembled carpet bombings I saw in Vietnam,” he said the next day. “Nothing was left where a bunch of houses used to be.”
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David and Paula Cockrum were painting the inside of their house in Jarrell when the tornado neared. It passed into a valley between their house and Ms. Cockrum’s mother’s house. Survivors and families of the victims were shaken to their core by what happened that day, perhaps none more than the young people.
The Cockrum’s daughter, then 13, was one of the young people who had a hard time coming to terms with what happened.
“It was like ‘young people don’t die. They’re not old,’ ” Ms. Cockrum said. “She had a hard time sleeping. That was when we decided to get a storm shelter.”
The idea proved so popular that the Cockrums went into the business of installing concrete storm shelters. To date they have installed more than 400 statewide, including about 40 or 50 in and around Jarrell, Paula Cockrum said.
Former city council member Ruth Dotson was in town and escaped the tornado. She lost several longtime friends, including Bernice Gower and her son, Brian Gower. Ms. Dotson last saw them minutes before the tornado hit; they were on their way home to Double Creek Estates.
“Some people moved away after the tornado, but it hasn’t stopped other people from living here,” she said. “I would love to have it, in time, where kids don’t have to go away to have a good time or to marry and have kids.
“It’s growing, but it’s still a local town. We want to keep it that way, even as the town continues to grow. And we want the people who lost loved ones that day to know that they’re not forgotten, and they never will be.”
ccoppedge@temple-telegram.com
