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Udall Remembers: 60th Anniversary Of Kansas’ Deadliest Tornado

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On this Memorial Day, people who live in the town of Udall are remembering community members who lost their lives in Kansas’ deadliest tornado sixty years ago. KMUW’s Deborah Shaar reports...

On May 25, 1955, an F5 tornado destroyed nearly all of the homes and buildings in Udall, a small town about 20 miles southeast of Wichita.

77 people, many of them children, were killed, and more than 250 others were injured.

Tracy Crockett with the Udall Tornado Memorial Committee says the tragic night is still a difficult memory for survivors today.

"Those who went through it, it is definitely hard to recall," Crockett says. "A lot of them won’t talk about it. A lot of people won’t tell their stories."

Crockett says memorial services to mark the anniversary honors those who lost their lives as well as the volunteers and survivors who helped rebuild Udall.

After the Udall Tornado, the U.S. Weather Bureau started a severe weather training program for storm spotters. It’s still a vital part of weather prediction today.

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To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.

Follow Deborah Shaar on Twitter @deborahshaar

Deborah joined the news team at KMUW in September 2014 as a news reporter. She spent more than a dozen years working in news at both public and commercial radio and television stations in Ohio, West Virginia and Detroit, Michigan. Before relocating to Wichita in 2013, Deborah taught news and broadcasting classes at Tarrant County College in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area.