Wednesday morning, Scott and Meagen McDonald were standing in their kitchen discussing whether they were going to move out their refrigerator.

With everything else being moved, Scott said, furniture and appliances could wait until the last thing.

“I don’t think we will be needing to move out the furniture,” Meagen noted, wistfully looking at the fridge that was still covered with magnets holding photos, notes and cards from the weekend. “But it’s just so hard, and we just bought this refrigerator two weeks ago.”

“Yes, I know that the refrigerator is all full of goodies that are probably now not so goody,” Scott said. “Once we’ve got the stuff out we are pretty sure we need, we can work on appliances.”

Moving day

In the aftermath of Sunday’s storm, the McDonalds’ home at 3414 18th St. had been declared uninhabitable by the City of Great Bend. Wednesday had been designated moving day.

As the kitchen conversation was taking place, outside a firemen’s brigade made up of a large number of volunteers was passing down items through the back door and through the west side window of the house. No other egress was available; much of the large tree that had broken through the roof into the front room was still visible through the ceiling, as well as still blocking passage through the front door.

On Wednesday, a large group of volunteers from the McDonalds’ church, Sunflower Diversified Services in Great Bend and Barton Community College assembled outside the house loading up what they could into the semi-trailer utilized by BCC’s CDL training program, as well as volunteers’ trailers and pickup beds parked up and down 18th Street. Scott is an English department instructor at BCC, so the semi-trailer and the extra help was welcome.

According to the city notice, the McDonalds’ notice to vacate extends to Friday evening. But there are storms forecast for later in the week and the volunteers were there to help; so Scott was hopeful they can get everything loaded up by the end of the day Wednesday.

“The permit goes until Friday evening,” he said. “But there’s a big storm that is supposed to be coming again tomorrow night so we want to get as much out as we can today.” 

“We have a friend who is out of town for two weeks in Arizona, so they are letting us use the house,” he said. “Barton has offered us their semi from their CDL training program and they are going to let us store some of that. People have offered space in their garages, so as far as storage, we’re probably good.”

Narrow miss

As with most of Great Bend’s citizens, the fury of Sunday’s storm took them by surprise as the family was settling in for the evening around 7 p.m.

Meagen and their three children were in the kitchen, when a large hailstone broke through the backyard window. “The kids were yelling and running into the front room to escape the glass,” she said. “It just sort of exploded and there was glass all over the floor.”

Meanwhile, Scott happened to be standing near a front room doorway that leads to the rest of the home. “I was just sort of standing there, when I heard some creaking, and there was a crash,” he said. The tree had come through the ceiling just inside the east wall above the piano, missing Scott by inches.

“The tree sort of kept the rest of the ceiling from falling in,” he said. “I’m thinking that the way the tree fell might have saved my life.”

Scott then yelled to everyone else to get downstairs, Meagen said. “We had to run back over all the glass, but we got downstairs.”

“Then we heard the sound of water leaking and we had water coming in, so we called 911,” Scott said.

Help arrives

Dozens of boxes had been stacked flat into the garage for Wednesday morning. Volunteers were assigned various tasks from box assembly, to the load-out lines, packing boxes to loading the boxes into vehicles for moving. Bottled water was passed around as the temperature climbed toward July expectations.

Larned residents Connie Carlton and Nancy Douglas were among church members helping with the volunteer relief effort. Carlton was watching over the clothes, as they would be collected and laundered for the family.

“The family reached out to church members, and Sunflower Diversified is here,” Carlton said. “The college (BCC) is here and there are a number of friends and neighbors,” she said. “Our deadline is to be done today (Wednesday), whatever they can get out, has to be out today. 

“There are rules because of the house being condemned,” she noted. “Through the window and the back door are the safest ways in. Everybody is working like crazy to get out all they can.”

City declared disaster area

Great Bend Emergency Risk Manager Amy Miller told the Barton County Commissioners Tuesday morning that an emergency declaration had been issued for the area. A verbal notice to state emergency management sufficed until a formal declaration could be signed.