15 Years Since Downtown Fort Worth Tornado
FORT WORTH (CBS 11 NEWS) - There are few reminders of the tornado which roared through downtown Fort Worth fifteen years ago this week. There are some large, steel girders bent and twisted at the corner of University Drive and 7th Street. The post office there has turned them into art work. But there is another, less known homage to the tornado buried in a basement downtown. And it reminds Chris Sherley, the assistant general manager of Reata Restaurant, what happened that day.
"Things were getting dark in the west but we didn't think much of it. Just because it didn't a lot during the Spring," Sherley said.
Sherley had a front row seat to chaos.
Fifteen years ago this week, blue spring skies grew dark and sinister. Around 6:30 pm, a tornado tore across the Cash America building on 7th Street and headed toward downtown.
Sherley was a server at the Reata Restaurant on the 35th floor of the Bank One Building.
"I see one of those umbrellas, patio umbrella, flying through the air. And I'm thinking at that time, 'Man! That's some strong wind!'"
Sherley is sitting in a replica of how the restaurant looked the day of the tornado. There are large windows and a scenic, wrap around vista of Fort Worth looking off toward Dallas. The blinds on the windows were actually salvaged from the old restaurant. Except this replica is in the basement of the current Reata. The view is a panoramic photograph taken of downtown from the roof of the Bank One Building.
"I looked over in this direction towards Dallas," Sherley said as he pointed at the wall as if he was actually pointing out a window. "You can actually see the skyline of Dallas, that's where I saw the umbrella."
Sherley said a meteorologist dining in the restaurant alerted him to the coming danger and they gathered employees and patrons into a stairwell.
"Before we closed the doors we saw the windows go," Sherley remembered. "We saw chairs and tables go across our view and then the doors close. And at that point it was very eerily quiet inside that stairwell. We didn't know what was going on outside. All I could think about was the building crumbling.
"We got to the 33rd floor and a woman busted one of the doors open to coming to the snare well her hair and her dress was in her hair was a mess and papers are flying everywhere it was kind of loud bangs and booms."
Glass rained down from the building as sharp shrapnel. The Bank One building was ravaged. But its reconstruction would be part of the catalyst that launched a building boom downtown.
The face of downtown would forever change.
"Absolutely," Sherley said. "I think that was the biggest turning point downtown has had."
