Residents of Cottonwood Mobile Home Park were allowed back home – if their homes were still standing – after a tornado ripped through the small coal mining town of Wright in northeastern Wyoming.
The Friday tornado caused two deaths, at least 13 injuries and destroyed between 40 and 50 of the park’s 185 trailers.
The Campbell County Sheriff’s Office had not released the names of the two people killed, a 97-year-old man and a 53- year-old man. One was found dead at the scene. The other died at Campbell County Memorial Hospital.
Two other residents, including one person with a back injury, spent the night at the hospital.
The mobile home park, closed Friday as officials sealed gas-line leaks and other hazards, was reopened to residents after noon Saturday, 20 hours after the tornado.
As some moved back into their homes, others picked through the rubble, scavenging possessions.
Campbell County’s emergency coordinator said the tornado caused more damage than any in the state’s history.
Though tornadoes are common in the area, they rarely cause much damage because the county is so thinly populated, said lifelong Wright resident Amy Manor, a Campbell County Memorial Hospital nursing supervisor who helped run the medical command center.
The Sheriff’s Office first heard of the tornado at 4:51 p.m. Friday. A woman called to report that her neighbor’s mobile home had just rolled into her yard. Shortly afterward, the tornado touched down.
Residents had about five minutes to react after the warning sirens began wailing. One woman who hurried into a relative’s house later found her mobile home leveled and a neighbor’s trailer sitting on what once was her deck, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
The tornado ripped bricks from a nearby elementary school wall, and left ruined metal siding, insulation, roofs and other detritus scattered throughout town.
About 1,400 people live in Wright.
Most are employed by Kennecott Energy, Arch Coal and Powder River Coal, which helped provide aid and supplies Friday and Saturday.
Though the Red Cross set up a shelter at the town’s combination middle-high school, only four families used it.
Wright residents took in most of the displaced people.
Donna and Walt Egbert kept their restaurant, the Right Slice Pizza and Pies, open past midnight, making pizzas and other food they took to dozens of emergency workers.
“We’re just getting started,” Wright Mayor Ralph Kingan said of the cleanup effort.
The Associated Press and the Casper Star-Tribune contributed to this report.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
