June 4 is 50-year anniversary of ferocious storms
Wednesday, June 4, 2008 10:16 AM CDT
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John Butak, 90, still lives on farm land that’s been in his family since 1865. Butak’s wife and two of his children were killed in the famous Colfax tornado on June 4, 1958.
Rod Stetzer/Chippewa Valley Newspapers
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Infamous 1958 Colfax tornado changed lives
in minutes, including that of John Butak’s familyThe forecast
The Wednesday, June 4, 1958 Chippewa Herald-Telegram carried the weather forecast written by The Associated Press:
“Showers and thunderstorms this afternoon and tonight with scattered severe thunderstorms and heavy rainfall likely in the northwest and west-central regions...
“Cloudy, wet weather prevailed in Wisconsin today with the western and northern portions of the state taking the heaviest soaking.”
Eau Claire had .67 of an inch of rain from midnight to 6 a.m. Thunderstorms were reported at mid-morning in Eau Claire.
Lost in moments: The infamous 1958 Colfax tornado changed lives in minutes, including that of John Butak’s family
By Rod Stetzer, Chippewa Valley Newspapers
There was an ominous note in the stormy weather forecast for Wednesday, June 4, 1958. Nearby Rochester, Minn., received more than four inches of rain within a six-hour period, and that weather system was heading into western Wisconsin.
Many horrible things were about to happen when tornadoes crashed into Dunn and Chippewa counties later that day.
Twenty-eight people throughout several counties would die, while at least 120 others would need hospitalization, including 46 at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Chippewa Falls.
Colfax in Dunn County was nearly wiped off the map with the ferocity one St. Paul Pioneer Press writer said was worse than the destruction he viewed of bombed German cities in World War II.
Later that tornado would be classified by the National Weather Service as an F5, the strongest on the Fujita damage scale, according to the Chippewa Valley Museum’s website, www.cvmuseum.com.
It was one of 60 F5 tornadoes reported in the United States over 50 years — and only one of three ever recorded in Wisconsin.
It was a storm that changed and ended lives, and scared a generation of survivors in the years to come whenever they heard the wail of a tornado siren.
The yellow sky
On that fateful day, John Butak’s life was about to be shattered. The yellow sky he saw was about to become vicious in the fury it spawned.
The town of Wheaton man lost his possessions, his new, two-day-old barn and much, more worse, his wife of 17 years, Lillian, 37, and two of his children, John Jr., 15, and Irene, 10.
“I think of them every day,” the now 90-year-old Butak says.
The tornado, which killed at least two people in Bloomer, would continue to take lives in Boyd and Stanley.
Other places got off lightly. Cadott Sentinel editor Walter H. Brovald disputed radio reports that Cadott was torn apart.
“We were lucky, that the tornado jumped right over Cadott,” Brovald told the Milwaukee Sentinel.
A rolling dog
A future major general in the U.S. Army wasn’t as lucky. He would run to save his life after watching a dog being blown down a hill while visiting William McIquham’s farm in the town of LaFayette.
“I saw his barn collapse in a second,” says retired Major Gen. James J. LeCleir.
His uncle in the town of Anson would suffer, losing his house in the storm.
“His house was tipped off the foundation. They had to destroy it,” LeCleir said.
Park’s trees smashed
The beauty of a wooded Irvine Park in Chippewa Falls was nearly erased, as trees that grew over generations were repeatedly snapped, twisted and crushed, turning them into splinters and sawdust.
“It’ll never be the same as it was in the past. Look! It took over 100 years to grow those pine trees,” Charley Ermatinger, the Irvine Park superintendent, told the Chippewa Herald-Telegram.
The mighty storm easily ripped the roof off the nearby Glen Loch motel.
“The tornado came across north of the (Irvine Park) zoo, up the East Hill and demolished the trailer park north of the fairgrounds,” Suanna Gagin Nelsand remembered in a letter written in 2006 to the Chippewa County History Center.
John Butak’s story
It had been a tough six months for John Butak. Awful, in fact.
It hadn’t always been that way.
“My grandpa bought this (farm) in 1865. He lived and died here at (age) 89,” Butak said. His father also lived on the farm until he died at the same age, 89.
John Butak was born and raised on the same farm.
“Some people move eight to 10 times in their life. We didn’t,” he said.
But on Dec. 26, 1957, the farm’s barn burned down. Butak said sparks coming out of a once-reliable cast-iron stove probably caused the fire.
His neighbors came and helped him cut logs for months after that.
He remembers a man from Cadott was supposed to come over on a Monday to help put up a new barn.
But the day before that was supposed to happen, Butak suffered an appendix attack in April 1958 while working on the barn.
He eventually recovered and the new barn was built. His family began using it on June 2, 1958.
Two days later, Butak would find himself trapped under the debris of the floor of his brand spanking new barn.
A muggy day
On June 4, the last of the touch up work was being done on John and Lillian Butak’s barn.
“The carpenters didn’t have the doors on it yet,” he said. They installed the doors and left at 5 p.m.
The Butak family was eating supper when the contractor stopped by to collect the last payment on the barn.
“I paid him, and he left,” Butak recalls.
The family wasn’t listening to the radio or watching TV, so they didn’t know the weather forecast.
“That day was very muggy. We were putting water cups in the new barn,” he said.
By 7 p.m., the family was doing chores. Butak, Lillian, daughters Ruth and Irene and sons John and Jim were all helping. Another daughter, Kathleen, was being treated with her church choir to a trip to the Twin Cities.
The electricity to the barn went out during chores. So the family sat in the barn, waiting for power to be restored.
“The wind picked up,” John Butak said.
The outdoor TV antenna bent over. The corn crib began flipping end over end.
“The wind was increasing,” he said.
Seeking shelter
John and Lillian decided they needed to seek shelter in their house.
“My wife was ahead of me,” John Butak said. Ruth was with Irene, and John Jr. with Jim. The family was spread out as they tried to reach the house.
Then blocks of cement began whizzing by. And John Butak was about to lose consciousness.
“When I came to, I heard crying,” he said.
His leg was under cement blocks. He could not move.
“I was pinned right there,” he said.
Right in front of him, Lillian was lying face down, dead.
The crying was coming from 5-year-old Jim. He suffered a severe cut to the left side of his head, peeling off part of his skin.
Near him was John Jr., who had died.
Ruth was also crying, suffering from a sprained ankle. Near her was sister Irene, who had died.
The storm had thrown the floor of the new barn on top of them.
Digging out
Butak’s brother-in-law lived across County Highway N from the Butak family.
“They knew we were in the barn,” John Butak said.
The family’s relatives and other neighbors broke open the barn floor to get to the family members.
John Butak didn’t want to go to the hospital. But his right eye was blackened, and he had suffered a concussion.
The tornado had broken off all the telephone poles and flipped them onto County N.
“Our house stayed, but it knocked one corner off,” he said. A machine shed hit the building’s kitchen.
The storm left John Butak as a grieving single father.
Daughter Kathleen also encountered the aftermath of the storm’s fury returning home from Minnesota.
“They came home on the bus behind the storm,” John Butak said. He is thankful she was in the Twin Cities that day, thankful she survived.
“For a month, I didn’t know if I was going or coming,” he said.
It took him two years before his life went back to “normal.”
“If I wouldn’t (have) had religion, I wouldn’t have made it, either,” he said.
A new life
Eventually, John Butak would meet a woman, Edna, who he would marry. They remained married for 35 years until her death.
Then he fell in love again. He had known Philomena since 1960. Philomena, 90, and John have been married now for eight years.
He is proud of his two great-grandchildren living in Maryland, proud of a great-great-grandchild born in March and another one born in Madison on May 25.
After marrying Edna, the couple decided the house that had survived the 1958 storm was too cold. So they sold it, and it was moved up County N about three-quarters of a mile. A new house was built on the Butak family farmland.
John Butak is 90 years old, outliving his grandfather and father. But he remembers June 4, 1958, with precision, as though it happened minutes and not five decades ago.
He came out of the storm — one of the worst that will ever strike western Wisconsin — with a new philosophy.
“You are all born to die,” John Butak said. “It’s the only way you can go. You’ve just got to know that.”
Rod Stetzer can be reached at rod.Stetzer@lee.net.
Emergency room treated 45 tornado victims
Manager Harold Guntner provided the following account of the activity at the Memorial Hospital in Menomonie following the June 4, 1958 tornado:
About 7:30, we received our first patient ... From then on, there was a steady stream of victims from west and north of Menomonie. A little later, we received a few victims from Colfax.
... As the casualties were admitted at the emergency entrance, doctors looked them over and directed them to x-ray, the emergency room, the operating room, or to cots. The victims were mostly covered with mud, and sand was ground into their clothing which was soaking wet. ...
Fortunately our stocks of medications and supplies were good so we didn’t need to call on other hospitals. However, we did get calls offering help during the night. ...
In total, we believe about 45 people were brought to our hospital and 38 were admitted. ... Many people came to the hospital to help and see what was going on, but all seemed to remain orderly. ...
A small girl was brought in with her brain exposed through a head wound while her mother was unconsciously hovering near death and her father was being x-rayed for a fractured arm. Her sister was transferred to another hospital for care of a fractured arm. Surgical care closed the head wound and covered the brain. (She is still living.) A tracheotomy was performed on the mother so she could breathe. (She is still living.) Father and another daughter are recovering slowly.
In the first few days after the disaster, those who were hospitalized were thinking about how to pay for their hospital care and treatment. They were told that claims would be made for those who had hospitalization insurance in effect. After insurance benefits are credited to the account and if the patient cannot pay the balance, the Red Cross will assist with payment on medical bills.
Cedar Falls hit by tornado; community extends ‘thanks’
Editor’s note: As can be seen in this report from a Cedar Falls correspondent, Colfax wasn’t the only town affected by the June 4, 1958 tornado that blasted its way through Dunn County. The story was published in the June 11, 1958 edition of The Dunn County News.
By Mrs. Ray Behling
Disaster struck Cedar Falls at 6:50 Wednesday evening when the tornado hit our town. Many from here witnessed the storm coming and were prepared to run to their basements. Before the funnel appeared, a weird roaring noise was heard.
Some said it sounded like a hundred freight trains coming, others claimed 50 heavy bombers were approaching. There were different versions as to how long the storm lasted. Although it lasted just a matter of seconds, it seemed to them to be 20 minutes and longer.
The storm approached from the northwest corner of Cedar Falls, coming across the high hill. When it reached the lake it split, one funnel going straight to the east, the other coming south down the lake to the top of the NSP dam ... Wm. Sorenson saw it as it hit the water above the dam, sweeping the water 50 feet high and three feet across, making it look like Niagara Falls as it came down. ...
People here can’t explain the feelings they had as they crouched in the corners of their basements, listening to windows breaking, trees falling, furniture and dishes being twisted around, venetian blinds being sucked out of windows, roofs torn off and garages, lawn chairs, etc. striking and crashing. ...
People began emerging from their basements and looking around at the damage, and if any tears were shed, it was for happiness, knowing their neighbors were safe and unhurt. After hearing of the death and destruction done in the path of the vicious tornado, our people realize how fortunate they were that what was lost could always be rebuilt. ...
The tornado seemed to jump over the houses, hitting one, missing the other. ... |
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