Deadly Bakersfield tornado was five football fields wide with winds of 140 mph

When storm chaser and TV star Reed Timmer rolled into Ozark County last Friday, March 14, the air was thick with anticipation. 

Timmer and his crew stopped at the White Oak gas station and convenience store in Gainesville around 5:30 p.m. in the unmistakable “Dominator 3” storm-chasing vehicle, taking a moment to allow the vehicle’s brakes to cool while the crew also checked the radar to further analyze what they anticipated would be a major, tornado-producing storm. 

It wasn’t long before the unusual vehicle caught the attention of locals, who flocked to the Dominator 3 to meet Timmer and the crew, shaking hands and snapping photos with the group many recognized from the hit television series “Storm Chasers.” Timmer, who served as the starring high-energy, fearless personality during the show’s 2007-2012 airing, is known for running toward the very storms others flee - both during the years when the reality TV show aired on the Discovery Channel and afterward, in various well-known tornado documentaries and on his own social media live stream videos. 

But by nightfall, the buzz of excitement turned to horror as a monstrous tornado tore through dozens of homes, tossed vehicles like leaves in the wind and left three Bakersfield residents dead in its wake.

The tornado was just one of many twisters that broke out across the country that night. In all, there were 40 lives lost nationwide. Twelve people were killed as a result of the 19 tornadoes that tore through Missouri. In addition to the Bakersfield fatalities, tornados took the lives of six people in Wayne County, and one life each in Butler, Jefferson and St. Louis Counties. 

Chasing the storm

After garnering quite a bit of attention at the Gainesville gas station, Timmer and his crew left the location and headed to a quieter spot on Highway 160 at the current construction site of what will eventually be a West Plains Propane fueling station at Highways 160 and 5 south, just west of town. 

Photos began to flood local residents’ social media pages, showing the TV stars parked in Gainesville. While many were excited about such a local star-studded appearance, others worried about what Timmer’s presence meant for how that night’s storms would unfold. Many Ozark Countians tuned into Timmer’s live Facebook video, following along with the crew in real-time as they continued their adrenaline-pumping chase to “intercept” a tornado.

Timmer and the crew took off westward toward Isabella as they watched the storm unfold on the radar. But before they got to Spring Creek, they turned the vehicle around and headed back east, turning south on Highway 5 and following it to Mountain Home, Arkansas. 

Timmer drove the monstrous vehicle as his crew member tried to map out a route on area roadways that would allow them to intersect the storm at its height of intensity. The crew drove to Mountain Home, then east, watching the storm blossom into a large wall cloud, but they were on the wrong side of the lake. Worried they wouldn’t make it in time, they turned onto Highway 101 and raced northbound toward Bakersfield as fast as they could.

Fighting fire

Meanwhile, Bakersfield Fire Chief Greg Watts and his crew of volunteer firefighters were oblivious to Timmer’s Ozark County appearance, as they had spent the day and evening fighting out-of-control brush fires across the area. 

The BVFD was first called out to a fire on Cromlech Lane, just north of Bakersfield, around 2 p.m. Friday. After fighting that fire for three hours, Assistant Chief Punk Stone and some others left to respond to another fire in the Lick Creek district and then onto Theodosia, where firefighters from several different departments were attempting to control a 200-plus acre blaze (see related story, page A1). 

Watts said that it was around dark at his house in Udall, when he noticed that the weather seemed to be taking a turn. “It was eerie...looking east we had that big blood moon, and then out to the other side it was lightning everywhere,” he said. 

Watts called Punk and the others, who were just finishing up at the Theodosia fire. “I told them they needed to stage in Gainesville. Punk asked why, and I said they’re saying there may be a tornado,” Watts said.

In Bakersfield, the rain came first, a welcome sight for Watts and other firefighters who have tirelessly battled dozens of fires over the last few weeks due to dangerous fire conditions. “I was so glad for the rain, tickled to death for the rain, but then the hail started, pinging the west side of the house. I said, ‘OK, we’ve got hail.’ Then it was like it flipped a switch, and it started pinging on the other side of the house.”

Sensing that severe weather may be on the horizon, Watts told his wife Zaylor to take their three girls into the back bedroom, the safest location in the home. 

 “I kept watching the trees out the window, and they didn’t seem like they were moving, but then I opened up the front door and looked up. That’s when I realized everything was happening up high. The tree tops were just going crazy.” That’s when fellow BVFD firefighter Zach Fowler radioed Watts and told him he’d lost power. 

“I said ‘Yep, we’ve got something going on here.” Watts grabbed a few chainsaws and hopped in the truck, heading down O Highway toward Bakersfield. He radioed Punk on the way, asking him where they were, and Punk replied, saying they were making their way down Smoky Road. 

While Watts was on his way into town, Caulfield Fire Chief Shannon Sisney came over the radio, asking Watts if he’d made it to the Bakersfield fire station. Watts said no, that he was on his way into town.  Sisney said “Oh, buddy. You need to take shelter. Reed Timmer is coming up Highway 101 right now and said Bakersfield is about to get hit with a massive tornado.”

Five football fields wide

Those tuning into the live video of Timmer’s storm chase were well aware that the storm crew had sighted a major tornado on the ground in Gamaliel, Arkansas, and it was barreling northeast toward the town of Bakersfield. As the storm-chasers approached town, the live video was cut off as cell phone reception diminished. 

Although viewers worried about the crew’s safety, the chasers were busy dipping down roads and diving through parking lots to find a path to the twister. They came to the monster’s feet at the Highway 101 bridge, intercepting what would later be classified as an EF-3 tornado. The behemoth, which measured 600 yards wide, the equivalent of five football fields, roared across the Bakersfield hills at 50 miles per hour in the pitch-black night, illuminated only by the occasional flash of lightning. 

Later, on social media, Timmer posted video clips of the tornado and its interception, saying that: “It had the loudest roar of any tornado I have chased since Philadelphia EF5 and has that textbook lean and vertical backside. The roar grew louder in Bakersfield, and debris was flying through the air with roofs lifted, and then you could hear immediately when it passed, maybe 50 yards to the south, after the wrong turn. I feel safer with the protection of the dominator chasing at night but not with these violent tornadoes.”

The National Weather Service in Springfield says the tornado started near Gamaliel, Arkansas, at 8:30 p.m. and crossed into Missouri at 8:40 p.m., reaching speeds of 140 miles per hour as it moved through Bakersfield. The total path is estimated to be 12.4 miles on the ground, ending near the intersection of Howell County Roads 7320 and 7390. Timmer said in another Facebook post that he thought it would be upgraded to an EF-4 or EF-5, but as of Tuesday morning, the NWS had stuck with its original EF-3 rating based on their visit to the area. 

Ozark County Emergency Management Director Curtis Ledbetter said that he was also watching the live video feed from Timmer, while participating in a chat with weather officials, awaiting notification of an official tornado warning for Bakersfield. 

Typically, the sheriff’s department’s dispatcher sounds tornado alarms in Bakersfield, Gainesville and Theodosia when an official tornado warning is issued for that specific city; however, the National Weather Service did not issue the tornado warning for southeast Ozark County until the tornado was already on the ground, Ledbetter said. He said that Arkansas is in the weather district of the NWS Little Rock office, while Missouri is in the NWS’s Springfield’s office. In areas where tornados and storms cross state lines, it sometimes takes the two entities extra time to relay data to one another, which may result in a later warning.

But about 10 minutes before the warning was issued, unwilling to wait, Watts chose to break the typical protocol and sounded the Bakersfield tornado alarm himself when Bakersfield was still in a tornado watch. “At that time, I knew there was a tornado on the ground in Gamaliel, and it wasn’t going to stop at the Arkansas state line. It didn’t care if there was a warning issued or not. It was coming for us, and we were in real trouble,” he said. 

After the tornado warning was issued, the Bakersfield FEMA shelter’s doors automatically unlocked, welcoming in several residents who had chosen to seek shelter due to the storm - some who said they’d taken the storm more seriously because of Timmer’s presence in Ozark County and his constant updates on the live video feed as he approached Bakersfield.

In all, it took 19 total minutes for the tornado to make its 12.5-mile journey, obliterating everything in its path.

Jerry and Pansy Webb

Watts arrived in Bakersfield minutes after the tornado hit, and he immediately met people on the roadway, shouting for help. With the Bakersfield radio repeater down, the use of the fire department’s radios on the Bakersfield channel was cut off, and cell phone service was non-existent. The crew had to utilize the “all sheriffs” channel on radio as their only means of communication. 

Watts said he was told that Jerry and Pansy Webb, a couple in their 80s who live in a home off AR Highway, had rode out the storm in their basement and were trapped under loads of debris. Watts said that members of the Bakersfield-area Foster family brought a backhoe over and began removing the debris from the Webb’s home. A ladder was later extended into the basement from a hole in the main floor, allowing the couple to climb to safety. 

Watts said that more information began filtering in reporting injuries at other residences, but thousands of trees had been ripped up from the ground and laid across highways and county roads everywhere, limiting where the responders could drive. 

Ozark County Sheriff Cass Martin, along with every deputy in the department, showed up soon after. “I have to hand it to those guys. I saw them take off on foot, carrying their triage kits with them. It was pouring down rain, but that didn’t bother them a bit,” Watts said. 

The Ozark County Road and Bridge crew was there shortly after that, serving as the first on scene to help cut a path through the plugged roadways. Working with Watts to determine the most important routes needed to reach injured residents, the crews worked tirelessly to clear the way for responders and emergency personnel. MoDOT crews showed up soon after and got to work too, along with private citizens with chainsaws. 

Baxter Health in Mountain Home, Arkansas, had sent four ambulances out, headed for the West Plains area, but when the emergency vehicles couldn’t get there, they diverted them to Bakersfield. Paired with two Ozark County ambulances, the crews were staged at Dollar General, unable to get any further. 

Carol Evans

After ensuring that Jerry and Pansy Webb were well on their way to being freed, Watts worked his way over to Carol Evans’ home on Highway 142. “We got word that Carol was trapped in her house and was needing an ambulance. Cass and the deputies didn’t know where that was at, and lightning was flashing. I said, ‘You see what’s left of that home up on the hill... that’s where they live,” Watts said. “We had to go through the field because we couldn’t go on the road yet. But they took off on foot with all their gear, ready to treat what they could.” Someone told Watts that a pickup would be needed in order to transport Carol down to the roadway where she could be loaded to an ambulance. He said he drove his truck up the hill across what used to be fenced areas. “The t-posts were all there, but none of the wire was,” he said. He picked up the sheriff and Deputy Ves Phelan, while fellow Deputy Josh Sherman and others took off toward Zastrow Hill, where multiple other injuries were reported. 

When they got to the house, they began searching for Carol without luck. Fearing the worst, Watts was desperate to find her. But soon, they were told that a neighbor was able to get to Carol out of the house, and amazingly, she was uninjured. 

Carol later told Watts that she was home alone that night, listening to the thunder storm when she heard something loud hit her door. She opened the door, looked out into, presumably the face of the tornado, then slammed the door shut, and quickly hid in a small closet underneath her staircase. “She said she closed the door. Everything was just crashing all around her, and she just prayed,” Watts said. 

Zastrow Hill

After they determined that Carol wasn’t home or in need of assistance, Watts, the sheriff and Phelan made their way to Zastrow Hill, where Punk and several deputies were already working.

Zastrow Hill was a sort of compound where several people lived, Watts explained. Two houses sat on the property, alongside multiple camper trailer residences. But that night, as the responders reached the top of the hill, they wouldn’t have known that if they weren’t familiar with the place. There was nothing left except debris and vehicles strung across the countryside. Responders found two of the residents, Tammy Zastrow and Ray Morris, lying on the ground outside. Tragically, they had already been killed in the storm’s wrath. Emma Zastrow, known by many as “Granny,” was found near Tammy’s body. Emma was alive but badly hurt. 

Another woman, Erika Ryan, had been carried by the tornado to an area near the wood line. She was critically injured but alive. Another man, John Fienhold, also lay on the hill with serious injuries. Petey Fienhold was there but uninjured. 

“We hauled the victims out in whatever way we could - sheriff’s department vehicles and in pickups,” Watts said. They were then taken to awaiting ambulances and rushed to area hospitals. Erika’s injuries were extensive, and she reportedly died shortly after arriving at the hospital. 

Emma remains in the intensive care unit with several broken bones and other injuries. A family member posted to Facebook that John Fienhold is in the trauma intensive care unit at Mercy Hospital in Springfield where he also suffered several broken bones and has had continuous oxygen issues. He was intubated and remains on life support as of presstime Tuesday. 

Several vehicles that were parked at the compound were strewn hundreds of yards away, and pieces of them even further. “The door that’s missing on that one was found over on YY Highway, about a mile and a half from here. It’s over on Row Guffey’s place, up in a tree, wrapped around it,” Watts said Monday, pointing out various vehicles that lay along the highway and explaining where they’d come from and where their parts ended up.

Two vehicles, both lying on their sides with their bottoms fused together, had apparently become intertwined after slamming into each other sometime during the tornado. The pair, fused together, formed a round vehicle ball, that spun across the hill, leaving circles in the earth in its path (see the two vehicles in the photo at the top of page 1, just above the caption).

Ledbetter said that while the storm was moving through Bakersfield, his attention was piqued when meteorologists and storm spotters said they could see a massive debris ball 18,000 feet (or 3.4 miles) in the air. “It was basically right above the Zastrow Hill property,” he said. A debris ball, sometimes referred to as a debris signature, is spotted as an area of high reflectivity on the radar, signaling the presence of various debris - remnants of trees, buildings, vehicles and other items ripped from the ground and swirled high into the air. 

Swensen family

In addition to the Webb couple, Carol Evans and those on Zastrow Hill, the only other residents in the direct path of the tornado who remained in their home was the Swensen family. 

Derik and Tonya Swensen, along with their three daughters and Derik’s mother and father hid in a small interior bathroom to ride out the storm. As, the tornado tore over the structure, it ripped the roof off from over their heads, flinging it skyward in the 140 mile per hour winds, which threatened to pull their own bodies into the dark night.

Derik’s brother Karl posted a video to Facebook showing what remained of the home - very little besides the bathroom they were located in. He explained that the family had originally chosen another bathroom to ride out the storm but, at the last minute, changed their minds. He said they would likely not be alive if they had chosen the other room. 

McCollums and others

Watts said that in total there were 21 homes that were completely demolished in Bakersfield and likely around 30 to 40 homes in total that were heavily damaged. Dozens of others sustained less serious damage. “Too many to count, really,” Watts said. 

Thankfully, all of the other residents in the direct path were either out of town or had sought safety somewhere else. But, although their lives have been spared, many families have lost everything but the clothes on their backs. 

Garrett and Desiree McCollum are included in that group. The young couple, who are expecting a baby in two and a half months, lived in a mobile home off Highway 142. Now, concrete blocks are the only indicator that a home once stood there. 

Garrett said he and Desiree were home watching the weather intently last Friday night as the storm approached. “My brother was here too. We were waiting it out to see if we needed to go down into the cellar,” Garrett told the Times, referencing a root cellar built into the earth at his dad’s property, just down the road. “His girlfriend was watching Reed Timmer on her phone, and we had [KY3’s] Ron Hearst on the TV,” Garrett said. When it was apparent that there was a significant tornado threat, Garrett, Desiree and the rest of the family decided to go to the cellar and ride out the storm there. 

“Reed [Timmer] said it was one of the loudest he’d ever heard. It didn’t sound like that to us. But that cellar is pretty enclosed. We heard a little bit of wind and what we thought might’ve been a branch that had fallen,” Garrett said. The soundproofing of the cellar made the discovery of what they found when they opened the door even more shocking. What had sounded like a little wind and a branch breaking was actually the tornado passing over, ripping up massive trees all around them. 

The world seemed to have tipped upside down from the few minutes they spent in the cellar. The trailer’s frame lay bent and mangled in a field some distance away. The rest of the structure - walls, ceiling, contents - all missing. Debris was everywhere. Their vehicles were smashed, curled and pulled apart. One truck was flattened in what they suspect was caused by the mobile home’s frame slamming into the top of the vehicle. McCollum said the truck he drove to his dad’s house was also badly damaged when an arm-sized branch came through the windshield, the dash, the steering wheel and was impaled into the driver’s seat.

“The first thing we did was go and look for our dog. We had left it inside the trailer when we went down to the cellar. It somehow survived. We found her down in the woods over there,” Desiree said, pointing to an area not far from where there home used to sit. Another dog, a red heeler that was on the mobile home’s back porch, also returned after the storm, she said. 

The McCollums were able to pick up some of their clothing from the fields and yard, but most of what was inside their home was nowhere to be found. “Our deep freeze is over in the trees over there. We had a full pig in it. All of the dogs are going crazy over it,” Garrett said, laughing. “Every dog around here is fat and happy, that’s for sure. I watched one yesterday walk up here with a ham steak. They’ve got ribs, ham steaks, pork chops.. all of it.”

Garrett said that they were surprised to discover that his gun safe had been pulled from the trailer and thrown quite a distance from their home. The tornado blew the locked door open, causing all of his guns to scatter across the hillside. “I think we’ve found all of them now. Most of them were busted in half or had busted scopes, but we tracked them all down. A bunch of them were under that truck,” he said, referencing his red pickup that lay smashed nearby. We had to jack up the back of the truck to pull some of them out because the tire was on top of them,” he said. 

Garrett said they found part of the motor of his side-by-side in the furthest field viewable from their home, along with his bumper trailer that was all twisted up. 

The tornado hit Garrett’s dad’s house, a mobile home which will likely be a total loss, he said, as the storm pushed it off its blocks, and the floor separated from the frame. The twister also hit his sister and brother-in-law’s home (Chelsea and Eric See), located within viewing distance away. 

Garrett said it took five hours with a chainsaw to cut a path out of the driveway, and he and others have continued working since that time to clear what they can. 

The McCollums say they’ve been blessed with lots of help from friends and family - and even several complete strangers. On Monday, Garrett and Desiree stopped to talk with the Times as the couple’s friends and family had multiple track-loaders and around 20 chainsaws running to clear debris from the property, salvaging logs to sell where they could, he said. He hopes to earn enough from the logs to re-fence the property, as all of the fence was taken. He’d been pulling t-posts to salvage as he could. 

Other help has come in unexpected ways. “We had a lady come in here from Flippin (Arkansas). We didn’t know who she was, and she didn’t really know us either, but she just handed us $600,” he said. “Someone else brought $600 worth of groceries to my dad’s. People have given us so much stuff - even money. So right now, we’re pretty good. We’re just waiting on insurance before we start rebuilding or decide what to do next,” Garrett said. The couple say they are currently staying with Desiree’s parents in an area between Caulfield and South Fork, which had been without water until Monday due to what they believed was a lightning strike to the well pump. 

The McCollums, like so many other survivors in Bakersfield, are choosing to look at the bright side of things. 

“We’re just thankful we hadn’t already had our baby showers yet,” Desiree said with a smile. “But really, the thing that we’re most thankful for is that we’re still here. All of this other stuff can be replaced. We’re alive, and that’s what matters.”

Many helping hands

Watts said that the outpouring of support has been amazing, as hundreds of people have found ways to help. 

“We are so thankful for the sheriff’s department and all the fire departments who came out to help, along with MoDOT, Ozark County Road and Bridge and everyone else who has pitched in,” Watts said.

The Bakersfield FEMA building on the school campus had been transitioned into a temporary command center where donations were being housed and distributed to tornado victims, but school officials say the donations will be transferred to other locations as the school prepares to use the space for upcoming testing. The Bakersfield Church of Christ and the Bakersfield First Assembly of God has food, water, cleaning supplies, toiletries, hygiene products, baby products, clothes, shoes, sheets, blankets, pillows, trash bags and more to give away, volunteers say. There are tons of donations, and they urge anyone affected to take advantage of the offerings. 

Many others have also collected and distributed items as they could. Several people are bringing food for volunteers and storm victims to eat while working on clean up duty. Bootleggers BBQ, At the Curb food truck and Tribal Cajun all handed out catered meals throughout the weekend, while residents and churches just drove around passing out hamburgers, hotdogs and sandwiches to working families and volunteers. 

Organizers say that they’ve reached the maximum number of most items that they needed, although Watts said that portable battery packs to charge cell phones and small electronics would be helpful to donate, along with maybe small generators. Others can give financially, either to churches in the area who are offering their support or through a newly formed Bakersfield Tornado Relief account at Century Bank of the Ozarks. All proceeds from that fund will go to Bakersfield School to address the individual needs of students and their families directly impacted by the tornado.  

For more information or continued information on support efforts, visit the “Bakersfield MO Tornado Recovery Hub” Facebook page or call the Bakersfield FEMA shelter at 417-284-7333. 

The most important part still stands

Bakersfield now faces the long road to recovery. Families who lost everything are sifting through the wreckage, salvaging what little remains of their former lives. Volunteers, neighbors and first responders continue to work tirelessly, clearing debris and offering support to those in need.

Despite the destruction, there is hope and power in coming together to help one another. Stories of survival—like the Swensen family’s last-minute decision to take shelter in a different bathroom, or the McCollums emerging from their root cellar to an unrecognizable world—are reminders of both the storm’s raw power and the unbreakable human will to carry on.

Reed Timmer and his crew are now out chasing the next series of storms, but the people of Bakersfield remain, thankful for his forewarning, as they begin rebuilding, piece by piece, the community bound together by shared loss, hope and determination for a brighter future. Although the storm may have torn through bricks and beams, its force pales in comparison to what really matters - the love shared between friends and neighbors.