TORNADOS: Death and destruction

With all the tornado alerts that have kept our phones buzzing this past week, I wanted to find out more about the major tornados that have hit our area. Here's what I came up with, after 45 minutes of research online (the National Weather Service's website and Tornado Project Online) and in the basement archives of the Kennett Library:
1. On Sunday, March 21, 1976, a twister lifted the roof off a 150-year-old barn at Paul and Debbie Mahoney's farm on Route 842, west of Unionville. Part of the roof blew across the road, but another part fell on the couple, who had been cleaning stalls. Paul was killed and his wife suffered a broken neck. The couple had four daughters and had moved to the farm only about six months before.
2. At about 10 p.m. Sept. 5, 1979, James W. Boyer, 62, was killed when an F3 tornado, part of Hurricane David, hit his trailer on Penn Green Road in New Garden Township and hurled him out of it. He had worked for the Pizzini mushroom farm for 37 years and was set to retire shortly; in fact, he and Leone "Sonny" Pizzini had an appointment at the Social Security office the very next day. According to a newspaper account, the storm "cut a line through the township from the Delaware line near Newark Road where the Charles Wilkinson home was destroyed through Laurel Heights Road and north to the Penn Green Road location."
3. On July 17, 1992, an F2 tornado blew out the side of the Stone Barn Restaurant on Route 842 in West Marlborough. It then crossed Route 842, raced across Newark Road, destroying many trees in the process, lifted the roof off Bruce Davidson's indoor arena on Route 82 and then hit Scott Road, Route 162 and Kelsall Road before lifting at Cannery Road. The storm interrupted a wedding rehearsal dinner at the Hazzard farm on Route 82, but the wedding of Beth Gosnell and Douglas Abraham went on as planned the next day, thanks to a generator and the debris-clearing efforts of friends and neighbors.
4. On July 27, 1994, an F3 tornado ripped through the White Clay Creek Preserve, destroyed six houses in the Hunter's Run development in London Britain Township and damaged 23 others, injuring 11 residents. It then hit mushroom houses at Starr and Ellicott Roads; buildings along Newark Road, near the New Garden Airport; and more mushroom houses and a workers' trailer at the Joseph D'Amico farm along Penn Green Road in New Garden Township. The tornado then traveled north through East Marlborough Township, damaging a home and buildings at Line and Byrd Road at New Bolton Center, ripping down power lines and trees at Route 926 and Wollaston Road, damaging the roof and breaking windows at Unionville Elementary School and destroying a cement block garage at the Freemans' house across the street. It ended in Newlin Township, damaging more houses and trees. It was part of the same storm that killed a couple and their baby in Limerick 50 minutes later.
I owe a big thank you to Kennett Library reference librarian Paul Sapko for showing me where the bound volumes of the "Kennett News & Advertiser" and the "Kennett Paper" are stored. What an amazing resource!