It was 20 years ago today years have passed since an F4 Tornado swept through the Blue Ash and Montgomery areas, leaving four people dead and $25 million in damage.
The April 9, 1999 twister touched down around 5 a.m. and reached wind speeds of 260 mph.
The National Weather Service said the tornado varied in width between 400 feet to a mile as it destroyed 200 homes and damaged more than 400 more with more than 100 people left homeless. The tornado claimed 4 lives in Ohio. Most of its life, the tornado did F-3 damage, but intensified to an F-4 briefly as it passed Blue Ash.
The Blue Ash, Montgomery, and Symmes Township tornado still stands as one of the deadliest on record in the Tri-State. 38-year-old Donna Lewis of Blanchester was killed on I-275 near Montgomery Road. 40-year-old and Blue Ash Bob Evans manager Charles Smith was killed on I-71 near Pfeiffer Road. Lee and Jacqueline Cook were also killed after being thrown from their home that morning. Their bodies were found in a field near Sycamore High School. The tornado was roughly 270 yards wide as it came through the residential community across from Sycamore High School.
The signs of damage 20 years after the tornado have been replaced with signs of growth. Most of the trees at the Johnson Nature Preserve were destroyed. If you look carefully, you can see trees that began their life around the time of the tornado growing through the trees pushed over by the storm. There are also plants growing near the tornado's path that were not there prior to the tornado. The wind that night dispersed seeds through the air, and some of those turned to plants at the preserve.
Many recalled how lucky it was that the tornado didn’t occur 2 hours later, when a nearby high school would have been filling up with students for the school day.