Tornado hit Mt. Washington 25 years ago
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - Twenty-five years ago, June 2, 1998, a tornado hit Mt. Washington. Today, little evidence remains of the damage, but the memories of that day still loom large.
Lifelong Mt. Washington resident Tom Horstman remembers it like it was yesterday.
"And the next thing I knew, this big wall just started coming up Virginia Avenue, and everything was going up in the air. And then the next thing I knew, on Shiloh Street, a metal roof came flying up Shiloh," said Horstman.
He survived the tornado that hit there that night. In fact, everyone survived it, which still astonishes two men who were on the front lines of forecasting it.
"The fact that nobody was seriously hurt was kind of a miracle," said KDKA Radio host Larry Richert.
"I think one of the bits of good fortune of that night is that it happened during the news. During the 5:3 to 6:30 time block, a lot of people were watching television at that time, and so the warning was out," added retired KDKA-TV meteorologist Dennis Bowman.
Twenty-five years ago, Richert was doing the weather at KDKA-TV while Bowman was working at WPXI-TV. Both vividly recall the moments right before the tornado hit.
"I had a live shot of the wall cloud over Three Rivers Stadium. And if I had just stayed with that shot, we would've watched the wall cloud produce the tornado that went on over to hit Mt. Washington," Bowman said.
"I remember looking at the radar and seeing the signature red hook and said, 'that's a tornado' and looked up on the monitor and saw it coming down the river," added Richert.
The monitor Richert's talking about showed KDKA-TV's tower cam, which now-retired KDKA-TV photographer Linda Lubozynski had turned to capture the now-famous shot of the tornado as it touched down.
"I got a call from one of our photographers, Paul Spradley, and he said, 'Linda turn the tower cam around to Mt. Washington'. Rich Henke was working with me at the time. We both saw the shot of the tornado and we went, 'Oh my!'" said Lubozynski.
While everyone remembers the tornado that hit Mt. Washington, it was just one of nine that hit the region that night.
"We had tornado warnings in like eight different counties at the same time. All of the thunderstorms that were being manufactured that night were supercells," said Bowman.
"There were two swarms that night. In fact, once the tornado came to Mt. Washington and a few other areas. There was a pause, and the sun came out. And so everybody thought it was over for the night. But then we had to tell people we had another set of tornadoes bearing down on the region," Richert added.
When it was all over, the path of destruction stretched from Beaver to Somerset counties. In Pittsburgh alone, nearly 1,000 homes were damaged and a dozen were destroyed. The damage totaled $14 million.
Twenty-five years later, a stroll down Mt. Washington's Virginia Avenue reveals the physical scars of that night are long gone.
It's a night that everyone who was either living or working there will never forget.
"We all knew how dangerous the situation can be, but the entire news staff also knew that we had an obligation to the community to stay on the air and keep everybody informed. And that's what we did," said Lubozynksi.