What a bizarre story!

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/archive/2004/06/04/twisterride.DTL

CONWAY SPRINGS, Kan. -- With a monster tornado bearing down on her last
weekend, Diane Neises sought refuge in the bathroom of her manufactured
home and locked her arms around the toilet.

The water lines snapped, she felt herself being lifted up, and something
hit her on the back of the head. She was knocked out and doesn't know
exactly what happened next, but believes the storm carried her half a
mile away, where two storm chasers found her.

Bill Kunze and Travis Scales had been out traveling back roads Saturday
night, tracking the violent storms moved through parts of Kansas. They
already had five tornadoes on video when they ended up in the area where
Neises lives.

Around 8:30 p.m., the men were making their way slowly around downed
power lines when they saw something moving, what they first thought was
a staggering animal. But as they got closer they realized it was a
woman, covered with blood, her clothing torn.

Kunze and Scales got a quilt around the incoherent Neises, put her in
the back seat of their pickup and took her to a rescue crew. The first
recollection that Neises has is being asked by an ambulance crew member
whether she knew she'd been through a tornado.

The 46-year-old woman got a warning about the approaching storms in a
telephone call from her mother, but with no rain even falling where she
was then, she told her, "Oh, Mom, it's not doing anything."

But later she looked out the window and saw a huge funnel cloud, just
half a mile away. She watched it chew up a neighbor's house, one of a
dozen Sumner County homes destroyed by Saturday night's storms.

Neises, whose husband Steve was at a friend's home, thought at first of
getting in her pickup and trying to outrun the storm, then decided to
try to ride it out in the bathroom of the four-bedroom home.

When it was all over, Neises was at a Wichita hospital, being treated
for injuries that included cuts to her head and body, three broken ribs
and eye injuries. Some of her hair had to be clipped, tangled
impenetably with shreds of wheat and other debris picked up by the
tornado.

Neises, resting Wednesday at a relative's home in Clearwater, said she's
reluctant to go back to what used to be her home.

"I don't know that I could handle it emotionally," she said.

peace,

-*-
Charles M. Kozierok )
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