Storm reshapes historic Carthage park; tornado damages homes

May 7—CARTHAGE, Mo. — For the second time in five weeks, severe weather hit Carthage, leaving homes and businesses damaged or destroyed and reshaping one of the city's most historic parks.

Huge trees that shaded Central Park and hosted hundreds of thousands of Christmas lights during Sparkle in the Park were "decimated" by Monday night's storm, leaving the park changed for generations to come.

Trees on the lawn of the Historic Jasper County Courthouse also lost large limbs.

More trees were blown down and homes damaged along Country Club Road on the west side of the Carthage Golf Course.

Carthage fire Chief Ryan Huntley said meteorologists with the National Weather Service in Springfield told him the damage along Country Club Road was caused by a tornado rated at EF0 to EF1 with winds of up to 95 miles per hour.

Damage downtown and in Central Park was caused by 85-90 mph straight-line winds.

"Everything has been changed," Huntley said. "Central Park won't look the same in our lifetimes. All those big beautiful trees were decimated. The park has been transformed."

Electricity was cut to thousands of Carthage residents, and Carthage Water & Electric Plant officials said they had crews working overtime to get everyone back on line. At the peak of the outage, about 2,000 customers were without power; that was down to 400 customers late in the afternoon.

The storm came as people are still recovering from an April 1 storm that brought 100 mph winds blowing down trees in Municipal Park and damaging historic buildings on the south side of the Carthage square.

Chase Newman, who lives on East Oak Street, was waiting on an insurance adjuster Tuesday afternoon to look at the huge tree that splintered the front of his home and crushed one of his family's cars.

Newman said the family took cover in his basement.

"The wind and the rain, the storms, you could tell it was pretty wicked out there," Newman said. "It goes so fast. It went from zero to a storm. It went from a storm to 'Oh, this isn't the same thing.'"

Newman said the tree punched through his home's floor and into the basement.

"While we were down there, we heard that big crash and stuff burst through the floor when this tree fell over," Newman said. "We saw basically the drywall and the joist get shoved through the floor. Everyone is OK — the dog, the cat, we've gotten them in. The chickens and the duck, they're OK. That's the big thing. The rest of it is stuff. Now we're going through the process for insurance. I've never gone through that before."