Jeremy Kappell / Tuesday, April 2, 2024

Stories from '74: Palmyra's Dave Armstrong

David Armstrong was home sick from school at the time the mile-wide F5 reached Palmyra, IN. He describes his family's horrific plight to escape the path of destruction on April 3, 1974.

We moved out here in December. School. How eyes for two months? What's? That. List. Move up Have you read that? Sister.

01:29 That day was warm. Much like today but not quite as breezy. 01:34 I remember riding down to Corydon with my sister to get some fencing. When we come back it was hot. Got home. My dad and my sister who lived here on property were getting ready to go to work and so they were busy during the day and 01:55 my mother and I were sitting on the front porch. As we were sitting on the front porch.. it began to hail. Then after the hail stopped, it got real quiet. And then a light rain started. ..this was all within 5 minutes.. We looked over the wood line.. over this way. You could see it was very, very dark.. and it was moving. 02:31We kept an eye on it and you could see what we thought was birds up there circling around. Got my father, he looked at and said we should probably leave. We were living in a new double-wide mobile home. We hadn’t build our home yet. So it was not a good place to be with high wind. So we all got in the car.. jam packed in the car. My sister and her daughter too. And went down the gravel driveway there and got to the edge of that ditch.. but it was full of water. So we headed back up.. went down the road up to the main highway which is hwy 150. When we got to there you could see that what we thought were birds circling in there wasn’t it was debris.. it was plywood, all kinds of stuff just circling. You could see this rotation of the clouds up there but we didn’t think it had touched down or had touched down and came back up bc there was no funnel. It was just huge rotation 04:00 and as we looked at it, my father turned out.. turned left and went back to the Greenville to try to get away from it. We were watching this rotation and out of it came little biddy funnels.. well not little, but compared to that they were. But they would come down.. and it would go right back up. It did that in many different spots, several times.. and again never thought it had touched down bc we didn’t see the funnel.

04:35 But what was also kind of strange is that, looking out to the side, which was to the south you could see what looked like white streaks of wind. But there was going everywhere, I mean sideways, so it was just a weirdest thing and about that same time my sister said, and we looked, there was debris crossing the road, but way behind us.. and it ended up being concrete blocks. But again, its just not registering that it had touched down. So we went on down about three miles and watched the rotation go off to the northwest and when we felt with safe enough we turn around and come back still expecting nothing happened just a lot of wind damage. But as we got closer to our home. Things started appearing. There was a trailer turned over and then all of the houses.. right up along the main hwy up there, there was a row of 7 or 8 small houses that had just been built. When we got to that point, they were all gone. It was just solid concrete was all that was left. You could look back here, in the corner of the woods was a huge piece of carpet that came out of my sisters living room.

06:18 We couldn’t get down the road bc of all the trees up there. So we parked up there and I ran from there.. and once you got into the field you could see everything was gone. It was just absolutely destroyed. Our home, that we had, had been picked up and had been thrown about 400 feet into the field itself. And my sister’s home which was over this way had absolutely exploded and was all tangled up and was in the woods. I can remember being that first one being up here, that it was.. I haven’t seen where a bomb went off during war, but I imagine that’s what it looked like.. the woods was full of insolation and other debris.. the only sound was a propane tank that had broke the copper pipe off it.. that was spewing propane, that was loud. I can remember running up here and then realizing.. you know.. we have no place to stay. We have no home. That kind of brings reality back to you… When I think back about it, I think Oh My.. what if I had not gotten sick and went thru all that I would not have been sitting on that front porch when we saw it coming. I would have been at school and they would have never known it. 08:10

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09:50 We showed my father what was happening. He said we need to get out of here. At that time we had a doublewide mobile home. It was new, but we hadn’t built the house yet. So we knew it could not survive a lot of wind. 10:07 We loaded up myself, my mother, our dog, my father, my sister and her child and we headed down the driveway. We got to the ditch at the end of the driveway, however, it was full of water so we could not do that.

So we headed down wingler road and went up to 150 there. 10:38 When we got to 150 we could see that what we thought was birds circling wasn’t, it was debris, it was building debris, it was plywood all kinds of stuff just twirling. But we still hadn’t thought it had touched down bc you could not see a funnel.. It was another weird thing that once we got on the road and headed towards Greenville, you could look off and see the rotation and you could see little funnels coming out of it.. and we thought oh no, here comes the funnel.. But they would come down and they would go back up.. come down and go back up and it would happen many times in different spots. Also what was strange is that you could look out across the field and it looked like it was white wind.. that’s all I can describe it as. It wind, streaks of wind going everywhere. 11:40 About that time, my sister screaming that there was debris going across the road behind us.. what we know now is that it was concrete blocks from a building being destroyed. But we didn’t know that at the time and still didn’t think it had touched down.

12:00 My father was trying to look at it and trying to drive.. and were telling him to just drive and you could tell he was having problems keeping the car on the road. It was starting to get really, really windy. So we finally got out of it’s path and went down about three miles and you could see it going off to the northwest. After that we felt comfortable about turning around and coming back. But still not knowing it had touched down. 12:32 But as we got closer to the home.. you could see trees broken off.. a trailer flipped over.. other things started.. more trees, more damage. When we got up here by the hwy, about a quarter mile from our road, there had been about 7 or 8 new houses on concrete slabs, they were all gone. Just wiped clean. And at that time you could see back up there.. there was a hickory tree that had my sister’s living room carpet hanging from it. Now that’s when it dawned on us that it had touched down, we just didn’t see it.

13:28 Trying to come down wingler road, but there were so many trees.. looked different than it does now. So many trees.. 13:35 so we parked and I ran across the field here. Our home which was sitting right here ended up being 300 to 400 feet down in that field where it hit with an impact.. at a corner of it and dug a huge hole in the property or in the field and it was just destroyed. My sisters was over this way and it looked like it had exploded. It was all twisted and mangled and thrown up against those trees back there.. I was running across the field to get up to here, cause we also had horses and other animals. The horses were gone, we didn’t see them anywhere. But when I come up here, it looked like a war zone.. I mean I hadn’t seen a war zone but I imagine that’s what it would look like.. the trees were just covered with debris and tin from houses and barns and insolation. It was just unbelievable.

14:50 I remember the sound cause it was very quiet. There was no traffic, it was just very quiet.. but it was very loud bc there was a propane tank that had turned over.. it was spewing out if you’d ever heard that.15:15 But then it dawned on me at that point that we had no home. That we had no where to sleep that night.. not just us, lots of people. Then later.. it kinds of dawned on us that what if I hadn’t gotten sick. I would not have been sitting on that front porch. My family would not have known it. I would have been at school and they would not have known it. So I don’t want to think about what could have happened. But even bad things, God shows who he is.

16:10 We were very fortunate. All we lost was material things. The horses ended up coming back. they had ran off somewhere. The only things we lost were material objects that could be replaced. But what we didn’t lose was any family member. We feel very fortunate that out of all that came a lot of good.. We feel fortunate.. we were probably within seconds of not being able to pull away from it.. they say the worst thing you can do is try to drive away from it.. but that’s the only opportunity we had to escape from it.. The ditch was full of water and was completely empty when we came back.

17:35 Actually we thought there was no way anybody could have survived in those houses up there.. in those seven and we thought oh my. There was an elderly couple that lived in a trailer down at the end of this road. They all survived. Across the road over here, unfortunately, a lady did perish. She was elderly and was in her mobile home and it tumbled with her and she did perish.

But we felt very fortunate for us to not have bodily injury when a lot of these other people did. 18:26 It was the right move. It was the only move we had. But it was the right move, it was the thing that saved our lives.. the feeling of feeling homeless. You know, I get that now with the homeless situation going on today. I get that. I know what that felt like.. especially as a 15 year old, its not something you want to think about. A childs number one thing they want the most is security.. and when you can’t provide that.. but we were fortunate, absolutely fortunate.

-Jeremy Kappell

Meteorologist, Journalist, Writer, Speaker, Broadcaster