Man recalls searching for wife after being trapped inside their home by tornado

Kathy Moore continued to make progress in a hospital intensive care unit Wednesday, pulling herself from the bed into a chair for the first time since suffering the most serious injury in the tornado that hit rural Sedgwick County and Andover on Friday.

The 65-year-old was sewing in the bedroom of their home on a dirt road on 137th Street East, near East 31st Street South, close to where meteorologists say the EF-3 tornado that destroyed hundreds of homes and buildings first touched down.

Her husband, Jim Moore, had just let out his daughter’s dog and was sitting in a recliner in the living room watching “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

There was no warning.

The lights went out. Moore popped up as he said the tornado lifted up their mobile home, turned it and dropped it.

Within seconds, their home was crushed with them inside.

It took Moore several minutes to crawl through the debris. He doesn’t remember if the debris was walls, ceiling, roof, household items or a combination of them all. The 67-year-old freed himself and looked around at his leveled home, starting to panic for his wife.

“I’m scared and I’m working as hard as I can to find her,” he said.

He eventually heard her cry. She was buried under a pile of walls, roofing and furniture.

“I was using muscles I hadn’t used in years and didn’t know I had,” he said. “Just dug as quickly as I could.”

Finally, he overturned an item, and there was his wife of 36 years.

“When I found her I hugged her and started crying,” he said.

He told her he loved her.

Moore was checked out at the hospital for tearing a tendon in his bicep.

First responders showed up, and so did their daughter, Jamie Seipel.

Seipel embraced her father while first responders checked on her mother. She was horrified by how the home looked.

“Disintegrated,” she said. “It just crumbled. There was nothing that was still standing.”

The heavy steel frame of the home was thrown 100 feet from the concrete slabs where the home sat, Jim Moore said. Somehow, the three sheds just feet from the home were unmarred.

Kathy Moore had little strength and couldn’t move her legs, Seipel said.

The first responders dropped Moore when a wet piece of drywall they tried to lift her up on broke, Seipel and Jim Moore said. They then used a blanket to lift her.

A neighbor, Jose Contreras, had also come to help after his family emerged from their battered home next door. First responders had thought another tornado was coming.

Contreras said Jim Moore told him ‘no, just save your life,’” before he went back to take cover.

There was no other tornado. It had moved on, damaging their neighbors’ homes before moving into a more populated area of Andover where it continued to destroy homes and buildings. There were only a few injuries, with Kathy Moore’s being the most serious.

Andover fire chief Chad Russell called it a miracle.

Moore was taken to Ascension Via Christi St. Francis. Doctors found she had broken a few vertebrae.

“But her spine is fine so no paralysis … that was a plus,” Seipel said.

Seipel said her mother should be taken out of the intensive care unit in the next few days and then moved to a skilled nursing home where she will do therapy for a month. She said her mother was moving around at the hospital on Wednesday.

“She’s really motivated to get better as quickly as possible,” she said.

Seipel and her son and daughter moved in with her parents after her husband died in 2015.

Her 5-year-old daughter then died in 2017, pushing back plans she had to move out. She and her 8-year-old son live with her parents.

She said her mother used to work as a certified nursing assistant. She likes to sew and crochet, often cooks meals for the family and helps Seipel by taking her son to and from school.

“I’m still so close with my parents, and my son is extremely close with them. We just decided that is how we are going to live forever,” she said. “We are a very close family.”

The tornado scattered many of their personal belongings, but they have been able to find some of the most important items, including her daughter’s ashes. A GoFundMe has been set up to help with medical bills and rebuilding.

This story was originally published May 4, 2022 at 3:59 PM.