Photo by Carolyn Mary Bauman/Fort Worth Star-Telegram, courtesy of PARS International
Tornado funnel cloud visible with debris flying in the air over buildings and a parking structure in downtown Fort Worth.
Carolyn Cruz remembers exactly what she was doing when she got the call that a photographer was needed to take pictures of a seemingly unfathomable scene: a tornado about to strike downtown Fort Worth.
“Like a lot of people were doing at that time of day, I think it was around 6, I was getting ready to go home,” says Cruz, at the time a photographer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “The photo desk called back to the photo lab where I was and said, ‘Someone get to the roof; there’s a tornado coming.’ I had one camera with me in the lab with an 80-200mm lens. It happened to be the right lens. As I was loading film in the camera, I was skeptical that I would be seeing an actual tornado downtown.”
She was wrong. Along with two other Star-Telegram photographers, David Kent, who is also a storm chaser, and Laurie Ward, Cruz, who then went by the last name Bauman, raced to the roof, where the three came face to face with an F3 tornado — the deadliest to ever hit the city, then or now.
“I was in disbelief,” she says. “[But] I wasn’t afraid. I just focused on the scene in front of my lens, staying calm, breathing slow to not shake the camera. I clearly remember saying to David, ‘It’s not moving,’ and he said, ‘That’s because it’s heading right toward us.’”
For many of us who lived in Fort Worth in March 2000, Cruz’s image is ingrained into our psyche. Featured on the front page of the next day’s Star-Telegram, it’s a shiver-inducing picture that, to this day, 25 years later, still haunts those who lived through it.
As well it should. At approximately 6:20 p.m. on Tuesday, March 28, 2000, a powerful F3 tornado mowed through the downtown area of Fort Worth, leaving in its wake a path of destruction that claimed two lives, injured 80 others, and caused an estimated $450 million in property damage. The tornado cut a 4-mile swath, crossing the Trinity River west of downtown, striking the Cash America Pawn building on West 7th, along with many other structures, before it careened downtown, blowing out office building windows, tossing debris, and causing panic during rush-hour traffic.
This storm’s primary tornado spawned another tornado that moved across the east side of Fort Worth and into the cities of Arlington and Grand Prairie, battering a mile-wide residential area and leaving nearly 100 people homeless.
“Considering the storm’s magnitude, its sheer force, we were lucky there were not more fatalities,” then-Fort Worth Mayor Kenneth Barr says today, reflecting on the 25th anniversary of the storm. “One person losing their life is too many. But it could have been so much worse.”
Storms were expected that day, but the possibility for tornadoes didn’t form until the afternoon.
“As I recall, the possibility of tornadoes was very likely as the afternoon progressed,” says Troy Dungan, then the chief weather anchor for WFAA-TV, a position he held for three decades. “A tornado warning was issued as soon as its signature showed on radar.”
The storm hit just as many downtown workers were leaving for the day. The proliferation of cell phones didn’t yet exist, keeping people in the dark about what was to come. “The early evening timing caught many people in transit,” Dungan says. “And away from TV and radio.”
While Fort Worth had seen its share of modern-day tornadoes before (just five years prior, a twister touched down near TCU, tossing cars and damaging apartment buildings), this one was different in that it struck downtown. Generally, local meteorologists say, tornadoes don’t often form in urban areas due to a combination of factors.
First, cities occupy a relatively small area compared to rural areas, making them statistically less likely to be hit, according to NBC meteorologist Samantha Davies.
Additionally, urban heat island effect, caused by the concentration of buildings and pavement, can disrupt the formation of tornadoes by creating localized atmospheric conditions that inhibit their development. “Potentially tornadic storms will often split and go around the heat island,” Dungan says. “This one was strong enough to just barrel right on its path.”
Longtime Fort Worthians will recall the aftermath: a post-apocalyptic scene of a mangled downtown. Broken glass from high-rises fell for days. Catapulted office furniture rested on cobblestone streets. Papers from buildings whose windows had been blown out drifted through the air.
As a result of the damage, downtown was shut down for 24 hours.
“It was a dangerous situation,” Barr says. “We decided to close off downtown for a day or so to keep people safe.”
While Barr quickly put into place repair and clean-up initiatives, certain areas of downtown were still unsafe — so much so that he covered downtown sidewalks with scaffolding.
“A couple of days after the storm, a sheet of glass on the east side of the 777 building broke loose, went around the building in the wind, and landed in the middle of Main Street,” Barr says. “If that would have hit someone, it would have cut through them like a knife. That’s why we put scaffolding downtown. It wasn’t a pretty scene, but it was necessary to keep the public safe.”
The tornado caused a significant amount of damage to several structures in and around the downtown area, including the Bank One building, the original home of well-known restaurant Reata, which closed as a result of the storm.
In a move that sparked a bit of controversy, Reata eventually moved into the space occupied by the Caravan of Dreams, the iconic live music venue on Houston Street that jump-started downtown’s resurgence in the late ‘80s. Reata’s move into the Caravan’s space effectively ended the Caravan, much to the disdain of the club’s many followers and supporters. In a twist of irony, Reata recently moved back to the Bank One building, now refurbished and called The Tower.
The 2000 tornado marked another turning point in Fort Worth history: It was the first tornado in the city to take someone’s life. Up to that point, Fort Worth was a “scientific anomaly,” in the words of the Star-Telegram, in that Fort Worth was the only major American city without a single tornado fatality.
In the eyes of others, the storm helped bring the city together — city leaders and the public joined together to maneuver the havoc caused by the storm. This, less than a year after another tragedy befell the city: a mass shooting at a local church; seven people were killed.
“Our city has an amazing ability to respond to events such as this,” Barr says. “I remember the city leaders came together the night of the storm, late that night, and began laying out plans for how we were going to respond. If there was a tree down in the street, we would get it picked up immediately. If power lines were down, we’d send someone to make those repairs immediately. The destruction downtown — we began our clean-up efforts that night. Fort Worth is an amazingly resilient city — and I for one am very proud of that.”
