Survivors of Tornadoes Tell of Fear, Devastation : Midwest: Twisters kill 27 people in two states. In Kansas, one left a trail of destruction 43 miles long.

ANDOVER, Kan. —  Suzie Storrer jumped from her car and began running as the wind howled around her.

The tornado, that huge funnel of destruction, had passed through only minutes before Friday, and the road was impassable. She nearly stumbled and kicked off her high-heeled shoes, running all the harder for home. The children, Misty and Kelsey, were there. Storrer did not even notice that her nylons were tearing as she ran over the glass and other debris in the street.

The houses around her were all gone, beaten to the ground by the force of the violent wind. So great was the devastation, she recalled Saturday, that she could not even tell where her own home had once been. She looked around for familiar landmarks, but they were all gone.

Then she saw the girls, sitting on a curb across the street from what had once been their house. A great wave of relief swept over Storrer as she cried out and embraced her daughters. She would find out later that Misty, her 14-year-old, had herded her 10-year-old sister, their two dogs and their cat into the basement just as the twister hit.

This small bedroom community, just east of Wichita, bore the harshest brunt of the dozens of tornadoes that whipped through six states Friday, killing at least 27 people--17 of them in Andover.

In all, more than 70 tornadoes touched down from Texas to Nebraska, the National Weather Service reported. Twenty-four people died in Kansas, and three were killed in Oklahoma. The twisters also left more than 200 people injured and at least 1,500 homeless.

But the most serious damage was in and around the Wichita area. “What I saw made me heartsick,” said Kansas Gov. Joan Finney after an aerial tour. “The suffering must be intense.” She issued a state disaster declaration, the first step in seeking federal assistance for the devastated area.

The most destructive of the tornadoes left a path about a mile wide and 43 miles long. It first touched down southwest of Wichita in Sedgwick County and then began to move northeast. At least two mobile home parks south of Wichita were destroyed, and then the tornado churned toward McConnell Air Force Base. The base hospital was heavily damaged, the legal office was blown apart and a number of other buildings were hit, including a wing of one of the base schools.

The tornado then took dead aim at Andover, a town of about 5,000 people. Alberta Wheeler, who has lived in Andover with her husband, Kenneth, since 1946, was in the kitchen of her brick home when the phone rang. It was her son, Richard, calling from a Wichita bowling alley.

“He said: ‘Mom, hit the basement. There’s buildings falling down all over the place,’ ” she said as she sat next to the roofless house. “I said that I was baking a pie and didn’t have time. And he said: ‘Forget the damn pie and get to the basement!’ ”

The basement steps were five feet from the telephone, but the tornado bore down on the house by the time the Wheelers reached the bottom steps. In no time, their residence of 45 years was all but gone.

“It just took a few minutes to tear everything up,” she said. Or, as her daughter, Holly, put it: “It looked like some hellacious giant came through and walked on everything.”

Several hundred yards down the road, workers dug through the Golden Spur Mobile Home Park, where all of the dead of Andover were found. The trailer park was flattened, as if all of the 290 trailers had been put through a shredding machine.

The search for bodies continued through the morning and afternoon, while some residents complained that officials were not allowing them back into the area quickly enough to sift through the rubble and salvage what they could.

Across the street, Andover Square, a strip shopping center, was heavily damaged, and the 7-Eleven convenience store owned by Charlotte King was destroyed. She escaped because she had just left for home when the storm hit. Her evening clerk escaped because when he saw the twister bearing down, he got in his car and headed straight west.

Down the block, the patrons of Livingston’s Restaurant were saved by racing across the street to the Pizza Hut, which had an underground shelter.

Lonnie Bartlett said he had just picked up a pizza there, walked home and looked out the back window of his home. He, along with his wife and son, then raced to the basement.

“It wasn’t even that noisy,” Bartlett said. “It was kind of a swoosh.”

Like the others, his house is gone.

So is Andy Ingland’s home, a few doors down. The Inglands crouched under the basement stairs and then looked up to see daylight because the house had been flattened. Then, cautiously, they made their way out.

“It was like gophers popping their heads up,” he said, describing the post-tornado scene as his neighbors reappeared.

On Saturday, residents looked for their belongings throughout the day. A car in Ingland’s front yard was crunched like a soda can that had been stepped on, and he pointed out another heavily damaged vehicle 50 yards away. No one seemed to know who owned either car or how far they had traveled before coming to rest.

Ingland said he had watched the tornado coming, watched it grow stronger and more menacing as it approached.

“That cloud was so big, so dark,” he said. “We just kept hoping the thing would lift up, but it just kept coming and coming.”

On Saturday, he and his wife and friends had packed up what could be salvaged from the wreckage, and not all the news was bad. The clothes were dirty but could be cleaned. He had found his wallet. They had found all of his wife’s jewelry on the floor. And, of course, they were alive.

“I’ll tell you what, I’ll never own another house that doesn’t have a basement,” he said.

As with almost all twisters, there was a certain fickleness about this one. Ingland’s living room was destroyed, but a statue remained untouched on the fireplace mantle. Only one dish fell from Alberta Wheeler’s china hutch, while a piece of lumber pierced her wall only a few feet away.

At one home, all but destroyed, the roof had collapsed on top of two cars, but a colorful mesh cap collection remained affixed to the only wall still standing. Houses on one side of the street looked like they had been hit by a bomb, while houses on the other were as tidy as ever.

Suzie Storrer’s family had been able to find her husband’s wedding ring and her engagement ring--but not the refrigerator or the washer and dryer.

The Storrers have moved a large recreational vehicle onto their lot, where they will live while sorting out their lives. As she stood in the driveway, Suzie Storrer told of something that had happened the night before as they worked their way through the debris of what had once been their home.

A couple who live north of Wichita--people she did not know--had pulled up as darkness was falling. They had a generator with them to provide electricity to light up the area. They had flashlights. They helped salvage the Storrers’ belongings. As they were leaving, the man gave Suzie a $20 bill and told her to have a good breakfast in the morning.

And when she asked their names, the man and woman just smiled and drove away.

“They would not tell me,” she said. “I wanted people to know about them, and they wouldn’t tell me.”