Corry family recalls deadly 1985 tornado 40 years later

Yahoo

5 days ago

Thursday night, we continued with our series of stories looking back at the devastating tornadoes that swept through our area 40 years ago. Back in May of 1985.
Many remember the death and catastrophic destruction that impacted the town of Albion. But there were other communities that felt the deadly storm's impact as well.
And now we move to eastern Erie County for the other EF-4 tornado that hit Erie County.
I call it a tornado. It was more rural. It came across that field. And you can see over here just the reminiscence of the foundation of the house that it took away. The house was rebuilt fairly quickly. It's a little farther back from the road.
It's now the home of Ember Thomas, who was eight years old when the tornado hit. Thomas also has vivid memories of that day.
'I remember the TV show we were watching, Wheel of Fortune. It came across the bottom of the screen and it said the tornado touched down in Albion. And we're like, oh, that's a long ways from here,' Thomas recalled.
'You know, that's not going to affect us at all. And then all of a sudden our power cut out. And so we all got up and we went to the windows and when we looked through them, it was this big like rolling. All I can think of is it was rolling black cloud across the road in those woods over there,' she continued.
'So my grandmother, when she got up and she seen it, she said, 'That's a tornado.' And she's like, 'we got to go to the basement.' We all, like, formed a pile, like a football pile, I was underneath. Then we heard the noise and it was like you could hear the nails kind of ripping. Glass was shattering. The loud train, that train sound,' she continued. 'And when it went over. All of a sudden, we had all daylight. Everything was gone. The whole house. It ripped it right off the foundation. There was nothing. Nothing left.'
On route 89, north of Corry, by the cemetery where the tornado passed eastward on its track to New York State. The funnel was over four football fields wide. It stayed on the ground for approximately 30 miles.
It lasted for 30 minutes.
'When we came back home the next day or the day after, we went over east of 426, on some of the back roads over there that got hit in that area. And there were people standing alongside the roads trying to get money. They had tin cans in their hands because their houses have been blown away. Wow. I felt bad for them,' Becky Linton, of French Creek, went on to say.
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