Delmont residents commemorate 10-year anniversary of Mother's Day tornado

Yahoo

12-05-2025

May 11—DELMONT — Bells rang from the Zion Luther Church at 10:45 a.m. on Saturday, May 10 to mark the exact moment of the 10-year anniversary when a tornado hit Delmont, South Dakota.
About 30 Delmont residents gathered at the Delmont Community Center to pay tribute to the resilience of locals in the aftermath of the tornado that rocked the town on Mother's Day in 2015.
Delmont residents noted the miraculous when the tornado came through, from mobile home residents not being home when the tornado ripped it away to a dog being rescued after four days without food or water. To this day, everyone is amazed that the Sunday school class was in the farthest away corner of the basement when the tornado split the 100-year old Zion Lutheran Church in half.
In the aftermath, the community came together to craft a symbol of hope for the Delmont community with wooden red cardinals. Barbara Hoffman outlined the cardinal on plywood and the Tripp school shop class cut out the shapes. Residents gathered together to paint the cardinals red.
"It was a collective therapeutic project for the town," she said. "One weekend, a bunch of us went out and hung them in trees."
Even after all this time, untold tornado stories are coming to light for Delmont residents, including for then-Delmont Mayor Mae Gunnare, who encouraged those gathered to journal and share their recovery stories.
"Everyone can recall where they were that Sunday 10 years ago," Gunnare said. "Write your story down for the future — for your family."
Zion Lutheran Church Pastor Barry Nelson read to those gathered to commemorate from Psalm 57, which states, "Have mercy on me, for in You I take refuge. I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed."
The town now has three tornado shelters, which can fit about 12 to 15 people each. Town leadership considered excavating the area between the Community Center and the United State Post Office, but found the new shelters would handle F5 tornados at a much cheaper price in more locations.
10 years ago, nine people were injured and seven taken to the hospital, but no one died.
Nelson, the pastor of Zion Lutheran in Delmont since 2012, drives 15 minutes to Tripp every Sunday morning to lead First American Lutheran.
10 years ago, a smattering of hail while Nelson was leaving Delmont for Tripp caused Nelson to pick up his phone and look at the weather app, which did not indicate any severe weather in the area. Nelson drove on and when he saw the tornado moving toward Delmont, he prayed and had his congregation pray when he arrived in Tripp. While praying, the fire alarms went off in Tripp and volunteer firefighters attending church left the service to go aid Delmont.
Nelson braced himself for fatalities.
The EF-2 tornado, with winds over 130 mph, leveled or damaged a 400-yard wide and 16-mile long path of farmland in its path. The tornado came from the south and followed along South Seaman Street and South Gifford Street northward until it destroyed most of the residences between West Fourth Street and Main Street on the west side of Delmont.
Douglas County Emergency Management Director Pat Harrington came upon the tornado aftermath from the west. When he saw the church and the leveled houses, he radioed the dispatch center for help.
The tornado took out the transformers for the Delmont powerlines before hitting the town, which kept the downed power lines from igniting the leaking propane tanks scattered across town, according to Gunnare.
Delmont resident Donald Hoffman headed to the basement with Barbara, his wife, when he heard the weather radio say that the Wagner Police Department had reported a tornado on the ground headed northeast at 18 miles per hour.
The tree in front of Hoffman's house was uprooted and all the houses around the Hoffman residence were leveled. 2x4 wood studs came through Hoffman's windows and finishing nails were thrown into the house windows and siding. Officials told Hoffman that the uprooted tree saved the house.
The whole tornado lasted about 18 seconds and sounded like an air compressor relieving pressure, according to Hoffman.
"This one was really weird, because the skies were clear. It just kind of popped up and roared through," said Larry Clouse, who grew up in Kansas and moved to Delmont 27 years ago to get out of tornado country.
First responders set up a base of operations at the baseball diamond south of town. After a head count was made, a search began for the missing. Officials called for a complete evacuation of Delmont.
Clouse, the president of the Delmont Board of Trustees, credited first responders' professionalism to the search and rescue operations after the previous tornados in Spenser, Woonsocket and Wessington Springs.
"If I had to do it again, I'd want the same crew," Harrington said.
Harrington and then-Delmont City Finance Officer Linda Liab credited Gunnare with helping the town recover in the aftermath of the tornado.
"She's the one that kept this town on its two feet," Laib said.
Houses in Delmont were searched for survivors and three different fire departments used three different colors to mark on the Hoffman's home to indicate that the house was empty.
"When we found out that nobody had been killed, I was just overwhelmed by God's grace and His goodness," Nelson said.
Seeing the volunteers from across South Dakota and those who came right away to help when they heard the news was a humbling experience for Nelson, who thanked God for those in the community who rushed to help their fellow neighbors.
When he heard the sirens, Delmont resident Mike Williams went down to his basement. His last memory before being elevated and thrown against an internal wall in his basement was seeing his brand new furnace being sucked into the air where his roof had been.
"The sound was something I never want to hear again," Williams said.
First responders found Williams under a sheet of plywood with a full box of Dakota Splash on top of him. Inside the box were six unopened gallon bottles of water, with a total weight of 48 pounds.
"And there's no doubt, without that, I really shouldn't be here," Williams said.
All that was left of Williams' neighbor's house was the carpet and most of the trees in the tornado's swath were uprooted.
Before the tornado hit, there was squabbling and bickering in town about how to grow Delmont. Williams credits the tornado with bringing people together.
"Let's do as it says, 'love thy neighbor as thyself,'" Williams said.
Farmers brought their tractors to Delmont to help move debris and aid rescue operations. It took about six to eight months for the town to clean up all of the debris from the tornado, according to Williams.
The population of Delmont at the 2010 census was 234 people and at the 2020 census was 153 people. Laib said the population had reached about 350 people at the time of the tornado. The city's population decrease meant a change of city government as well. The city went from a mayor with council wards to a trustees-at-large model.
Zion Lutheran Church rebuilt in 2017,
and while some homes were insured, other homeowner were unable to rebuild without insurance coverage and the lots were sold or remain empty to this day.
"People lost their residences, but not their spirits," Gunnare said.