Plainfield tornado still has an impact 35 years later

The devastating 1990 Plainfield tornado that took 29 lives still has an impact today, but for the better, meteorologists and emergency responders said at a Saturday workshop.

Meteorologists from the National Weather Service station in Romeoville joined the forum on severe weather preparedness in Plainfield.

Their presentation focused on how forecasting and preparedness has changed in the 35 years since the Plainfield tornado hit the area without warning.

On Aug. 28, 1990, the National Weather Service issued its first tornado warning for Will County at 3:45 p.m.

“That was after the tornado already rolled through Plainfield,” NWS meteorologist Zachary Yack said.

Yack presented an hour-by-hour list of forecasts that started with weather warnings the day before the tornado, but reported the first local touchdown in Crest Hill after Plainfield already had been hit.

By that time, Plainfield High School, St. Mary Immaculate Church and hundreds of houses already had been destroyed by the EF5 tornado.

“It actually was and still is the strongest tornado ever reported in the month of August,” Yack said.

Yack spoke about what unfolded in 1990 and how preparedness for severe weather has changed since then.

Showing a radar image available when the 1990 tornado hit, Yack said, “You can’t see anything that would indicate there was a tornado in there, but there was.”

Current radar technology allows meteorologists to “see winds inside a thunderstorm,” he said. Other advancements allow for warnings much faster than in 1990.

“We can get warning out in seconds,” he said. “Back then, it took several minutes.”

A weather spotter network that now numbers “over a thousand” makes it possible to “get reports a lot faster to verify what’s on the ground,” Yack said.

His presentation was one of several at the “When Seconds Matter” preparedness workshop organized by the Will County Emergency Management Agency.

The workshop covered a variety of topics aimed at preparing for the impact of severe weather.

People at the workshop were particularly interested in a presentation from Norman “Skip” Gonsoulin Jr. with the Illinois Attorney General’s Office on “Disaster Scam Awareness.”

Gonsoulin reported that home repair contractors have climbed to the top spot in recent years in the attorney general’s list of top 10 consumer fraud complaints.

He cautioned people to look into contractors' backgrounds before hiring them for damage repair jobs.

“I can’t tell you how many people hire a contractor, things go wrong, and then they start researching the guy,” Gonsoulin said.

He heard complaints from those attending the event not only about contractors, but also about insurers who undervalue the cost of damage after severe weather.

The five-hour workshop took place at the Plainfield Fire Protection District Headquarters, a building that also reflects how much things have changed since 1990.

“Back then, we had a volunteer fire department and a lot of ordinary people who volunteered,” Mayor John Argoudelis said, looking back at the aftermath of the tornado. “I remember local people cooking meals in the basements of churches so they would be distributed to the people who were cleaning up the mess.”

Plainfield Fire Chief Vito Bonomo III said 119 departments came to help after the 1990 tornado, but the system for assistance was not nearly as organized as it is today.

“It was pretty much, ‘Ya all come,’” Bonomo said. “Now, it’s formally planned out for the entire state of Illinois.”

Many of the people attending the workshop lived in the area when the tornado hit in 1990.

“It was so calm, it was eerie,” Lynda Miner said of the tornado aftermath. “Everything stopped.”

Miner now lives in Braidwood but then lived in a section of Joliet that was untouched by the tornado.

The tornado, however, did hit sections of northwest Joliet and Crest Hill.

The entire second floor of an apartment complex in Crest Hill was torn off by the tornado, Yack said. At that point, the tornado’s velocity actually had fallen off from its highest speed. The EF5 designation for the tornado was based on damage found in what was then a rural section in northwest Plainfield.

“That was a cornfield that lost every bit of corn ripped out of the ground, and a trench was dug into the field,” Yack said, noting the deep trench was a particularly unique indication of the tornado’s strength at that point. “It picked up a fully loaded semitrailer and threw it like it was a toy.”

The cornfield is now occupied by an apartment complex.

New homes have replaced many of the farm fields that were in the path of the 1990 tornado, increasing the need for readiness for severe weather, he said.

“Back then, it was a lot of open farm field,” Yack said. “Now, not so much. That why we talk about being prepared. It’s not a matter of if it will happen again. It’s a matter of when it will happen again.”