Dispatcher endured devastating night

Dispatcher Kelly Mann couldn’t help but stray from protocol and think of her loved ones in Chapman as storm spotters were reporting funnel clouds, high winds and hail.

“I briefly thought, ‘I want to go take care of my family,’ ” she said.

The Dickinson County Emergency Communications office in the courthouse basement in Abilene was a busy place on June 11, 2008, as a tornado took aim at Chapman. Mann lives in a trailer park there.

“It was like, ‘This is not looking good,’ ” Mann, 44, recalled of her hellish night at work in Abilene as an EF3 tornado with 165 mph winds tore through Chapman, killing Crystal Bishop and injuring dozens.

Kelly first wondered about her husband, Ray Mann, and their three children at home. Then she feared for their lives as the minutes turned to hours, and she hadn’t heard from them.

All the while, frantic Chapman residents were calling for help while emergency personnel were reporting in as events unfolded.

At about 10:22 p.m., Chapman Police Chief Mike Brown transmitted the order to “go ahead and sound the sirens again. We’ve got one overhead,” said Russ Wilkins, emergency communications supervisor.

First responders were reporting there was no power, that the tornado was confirmed “inside of Chapman.”

They reported later fearing there would be many deaths and injuries.

Dispatchers dealt with 96 emergency calls in the 30 minutes following the tornado, Wilkins said.

A woman called, saying, “We’re in the basement. I know my house just fell down.” Later she called back to report, “There’s a little girl, seriously injured, behind my house.”

Kelly Mann was among three dispatchers fielding phone and radio calls. Wilkins was at Salina Regional Health Center with his wife, Andrea, who was suffering from breast cancer, and the threat was just as severe there. Andrea died Nov. 29.

It’s in their voices

Wilkins, 47, returned to work that night, knowing he’d be sorely needed. As he took calls from Chapman, it was clear the situation was devastating.

“You can hear it in their voices. Everybody over there is pretty shook up,” Wilkins said.

On the outside, Mann remained calm and professional, aiming to help people who were calling to report damage and injuries. Some were screaming, others crying, she said, and most were scared to death.

Mann remembered one caller saying, “I can’t get out. I don’t have power. I’m hurt.”

Mann kept telling her then 20-year-old daughter, Lisa Russell, to call her family’s cell phone, but there was no answer, no service. Russell had gone to work with her mother that night, to learn what her mother does for a living.

Kelly couldn’t panic. She had a job to do.

“When you’re thrust into it like there’s no tomorrow, you have to put it aside. Mentally and physically, you have to keep going,” she said.

Leaving work to search for her family would have been futile.

“If I go over, who’s going to be here?” Mann said. “What could I do going over to that chaotic mess?”

Trailer was spared

A sheriff’s deputy called shortly after the tornado passed to report that her trailer in Shamrock Park was spared, that there was no one home, and vehicles were gone. That was at least some news, she agreed, but it was far short of knowing.

“I prayed my family was safe,” Mann said.

The trailer park is just to the southeast of Chapman Middle School. Her family was huddled there, but she didn’t know it.

“We have people bleeding bad,” said one 911 caller, saying he was in the school shelter.

Dispatchers provide a crucial service, Wilkins said, but the job can be frustrating.

“It’s a feeling of total helplessness. You know the tornado’s coming, but you can’t do anything to stop it,” he said. “I took a call from one man who said he was in his house, the windows were blown out and he was bleeding from somewhere.

“You’ve got to get him help, but you’ve got to find him first.”

There is no closure

Most difficult, Wilkins said, is that most often, there is no closure. Dispatchers radio for help, but their involvement stops there.

“We don’t know if they ever get help or not,” he said.

It would be another two hours before Mann’s daughter Aimee Russell, then 17, called to report the family was OK, and that they were boarding a bus bound for Abilene.

After her shift ended at 6 a.m., on June 12, Mann went to Sterl Hall in Abilene, to be with her family.

“I went and hugged every one of them,” she said. “The two little ones were asleep.”

In the months that followed, Mann said, she dealt with “emotional issues, the what-ifs.”

She was home April 26, the next time tornado sirens sounded in Chapman.

“I yelled at the kids, ‘We’re goin’ to the shelter,’ ” Mann said.

– From the Salina Journal

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