By Meg Jones
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Wisconsin)
WHEATLAND, Wis. — Town of Wheatland Fire Chief Alan Kaddatz was at work at a Kenosha County trucking company when his pager went off Monday afternoon: He was needed at a traffic accident with an injured motorist.
He figured it would be a routine call. So did the other volunteer firefighters who showed up to help the motorist stuck in a car turned on its side. But within 15 minutes firefighters were running for cover, hanging onto the fire engine and feeling the breath sucked out of them as a tornado plowed right through the accident scene.
“I smelled it, if you can believe that. I smelled dirt and I smelled trees,” he said.
Kaddatz has been a firefighter for 34 years and chief for the last 19. He knows this is an odd thing to say. But he said the twister smelled like freshly tilled soil from the torn-up trees flying through the air with other debris sucked up by 140- to 150-mph winds.
Sitting in his pickup truck near the accident scene, Kaddatz heard a deputy screaming on the radio and could see the rain pelting his windshield. That’s when Kaddatz looked to his left and saw the tornado. Shaped like an ice cream cone, it was swirling toward him, toward the firefighters, toward the injured motorist in the upturned vehicle.
“We’re not in tornado country. You don’t expect this in southeast Wisconsin,” Kaddatz said.
Kaddatz called in the tornado to emergency dispatchers and then hung on, watching debris fly around - “everything from beds to mattresses to bunches of insulation.”
Once it passed, Kaddatz checked on his firefighters, who were unhurt, and the motorist, who was hurt, but only with the minor injuries caused by the accident. Then he got on the radio and called for help, sending out to any agencies in southeastern Wisconsin and northern Illinois. Then he checked on a gas main break on 375th Ave. Then he drove from house to house, checking on people, helping wherever he was needed.
Kaddatz’s day ended at 11 p.m. He went home, which was unscathed, and tried to watch TV news of the tornado, but he was too late. So the fire chief went to sleep and was back on the job at 5 a.m.
“It’s the first time I experienced something like that, and I hope it was the last,” Kaddatz said.
Copyright 2008 Journal Sentinel Inc.