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HOME | TEXAS TOWNS | PARADES | EVENTS | PARKS | SCENERY | TEX MISC | SCANDAL | EXIT TEXAS |
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FORT WORTH TORNADO: 7 YEARS LATER |
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Fort Worth Tornado | Mansfield Tornado | OK Tornado |
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be exact, a storm struck Fort Worth with huge hail,
big winds, heavy rain and the touching down of a tornado. The storm
killed 4 people, injured 89 and did over $300 million in damage. After
the storm, debris was cleaned up fairly quickly. But the rebuilding of
some of the damaged buildings would hit snags which have left some scars
on the skyline. Scars which introduced the concept of a Plywood
Skyscraper to a semi-modern American city...
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click a thumbnail to view a photo
The apartment to the left on the day after the tornado.
This is located in the Cultural District side of the Trinity River.
The tornado touched down a short distance to the west of here, near a
huge Montgomery Wards store. |
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This photo was taken on May 8, 2001, over a year after the tornado struck. Here you can see that the apartment building that we saw in the previous photo has been rebuilt. That is the old Montgomery Wards store in the background. It never did get its windows replaced before Montgomery Wards went out of business. It is not known if the same tenants are in the apartment building. |
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One of the most photographed of the damaged buildings was the Cash America building. Maybe this was because this building housed the FBI and FBI agents had to scamper to collect scattered documents. For a long time the fate of this building was unknown. The next photo will show its current state. |
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The Cash America building now. Stripped down to its superstructure to make certain it was salvageable, an entirely different style building is now nearing completion. |
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And now, in August of 2002, the Cash America building is completely rebuilt with a parking garage standing where cars were destroyed in the tornado. The view here is looking across the field of grass where the Catholic Church shown below once stood. | ||
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Across the street from the Cash America building the tornado saw fit to wreak havoc on a Catholic Church, with a pair of nuns riding out the twister in a stairwell. The church steeple was sitting on the ground the day after the tornado destroyed the church. |
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Over a year later that steeple is still sitting on the same spot. The structure of the church was too heavily damaged to warrant reconstruction. And so now it sits like some sort of monument to the disaster, looking like a bombed out building from World War II. |
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You can see the Mallick Tower in the left background of this photo, behind the debris of this heavily damaged building. The Mallick Tower was also heavily damaged. But it suffered a different fate than the building in the foreground. |
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Here we see the Mallick Tower as it is now. It was the first building to be returned to its former glory following the disaster. However, the building in front of the Mallick Tower has not been so lucky. It is just a shell now, apparently awaiting a wrecking crew to take it completely down. |
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The most notorious of the damaged buildings, the day after the tornado. This skyscraper, called the Bank One building, housed one of Fort Worth's most famous restaurants, the Reata. Somehow the Reata was able to reopen within a month of the tornado blasting its top floor location, but the rest of the building remained mired in problems. |
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For awhile the excuse was that it was going to take a long time to get new windows...then mildew, then something else, then money problems. At some point plywood replaced the missing windows and the infamous Plywood Skyscraper was born. The Bank One building was scheduled for implosion, sometime during the summer of 2001. But that plan was later dropped |
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