Farmer Focus: Kansas town hit by triple tornado attack

Last month our county was hit by three tornadoes, but there had been no forecast of severe weather.
I was at a fire meeting when our phones sounded the alarm that our town was in the path of a tornado.
It is our policy to move our fire trucks out of the tornado path, so after a quick phone call to make sure my wife and son were taking cover, I went south 10 miles to our neighbouring town of Hamilton.
Hamilton was under tornado warning when we arrived, so we headed 10 more miles south to the highway junction east of our county seat, Eureka.
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The entire storm was growing and moving south-east, and when we got to the junction a warning was issued for Eureka. We were clearly in the path of the tornado.
We decided to head back north. Running into high winds and heavy rains, I began to regret the decision. Soon the radio reported power flashes in Eureka, a sure sign the tornado was ripping down power lines and transformers.
Returning to our station, we gathered chainsaws and a skid loader and went back to Eureka with 11 firefighters. The town was pitch black, lit only by the lights of emergency vehicles and the odd generator.

One tornado had cut a path 150 yards wide through the town of Eureka, while another stronger tornado destroyed a farmstead and cut a path up to three-quarters of a mile wide north-west of the Kansas town
First responders worked until 3am going house to house and clearing streets. Remarkably, no one was killed or even scratched. I think much of the credit goes to the National Weather Service for giving a 20-minute warning.
Over the next week, several hundred volunteers descended on the area for clean-up and more than 600 truckloads of debris was hauled out of the town.
Within a week, 90% of the loose debris was cleaned up, with only the houses that had been condemned left to remove. About 150 structures were damaged by the tornado.
I have spent many days and nights during my life on edge because of forecast severe weather. The worst storm ever to hit our county blew up out of nowhere. We count ourselves lucky everyone escaped unharmed.
Brian Hind farms 1,250ha of prairie land, of which 960ha is family-owned and the rest rented. Of this, 330ha is arable cropping with maize, soya, grain sorghum, alfalfa plus a mix of rye, triticale and turnips for grazing his herd of 400 beef cattle. Grassland is used to produce hay.