Winds rip roof from local arena

Violent winds ripped through Carpenters Arena south of Kalispell on Wednesday evening, tearing off the roof and killing one horse. No people were seriously injured.

The National Barrel Horse Association Barrel Race was in full swing when the storm hit.

The competition had started at 7 p.m. Wednesday. About 80 horses and 150 people were in and around the arena, watching the action. Lightning flashed nearby, mostly in the mountains, and the wind was sometimes fierce, but nothing threatened their safety or interrupted their rides.

After more than an hour of competition, several women's scalps began to tingle.

"All the girls were making comments how their hair was standing straight up from static electricity," said John Attanasio, who was working the gate in the arena. "Long hair was going up in the air. They were all, 'Look at this. This is pretty wild.'

"We didn't think anything of it. No one's been in a tornado."

Serra Valentine was at the arena for her first competition of the year. She thought the static electricity was unusual but, like Attanasio, wasn't concerned about it.

"None of us are from Kansas," she said. "None of us said, 'Hey, that's a warning sign.'"

Then her son called to tell her the National Weather Service had issued a tornado warning. She shrugged it off at first, then decided she should let someone know. She was on her way to tell Nancy Howell, the event announcer, when the air suddenly became very still.

A moment later, the power went out and the arena went dark. Then the wind returned - with a vengeance.

It hit so fast, no one had time to think. Attanasio and Valentine huddled next to the grandstands, then moved behind the building.

"I said, 'We better get to the back side in case the building goes over or the roof comes off … like a piano hinge coming down on top of us,'" Attanasio said.

When he looked up, he could see an intense storm overhead. Lighting bolts flashed between the clouds, which were swirling very slowly. The wind was whipping through and around the three-sided arena, straining at the ceiling and buckling the walls.

All around him horses and people were screaming and running for cover. Attanasio watched a small boy blow by him, but didn't dare rush out to help him.

"You can't go help that person," he said, "because then you're in it."

Then he heard a loud splintering sound above the howl of the wind. The roof that had sheltered the stands mere seconds before was hovering in the air.

"You should have heard it, the splintering snap when the roof ripped off in one shot," he said. "It was so eerie, it really was.

"We had women right next to us crying, they were so scared. Well, we all were."

It came off in one big piece, he said - thousands of square feet and several tons of sheet metal ripped away from the supporting posts as easily as tearing off a bandage. It soared through the air like a kite, Attanasio said, over the people, horses, trucks and trailers, until it slammed into a field just beyond them.

"It was awful," Valentine said, "the most terrifying thing I've ever been in, huddled behind this grandstand with the horses freaking out. The splintering noise of that huge roof cracking and splintering and landing in that field was terrifying."

Howell, the announcer, was just getting ready to leave the crow's nest when the roof came off. Seconds later, she watched a huge chunk of wall blow off.

The woman who'd been riding when the wind hit raced out of the arena.

"She made her run and had a good one," Howell said. "But the wind blew [the timer] over and we didn't get her time."

From her vantage point above the arena, Howell could see people scrambling to get out of the stands. It was chaos, she said, but no one was injured.

"People, if they fell, people around them stopped and scooped them up," she said. "Nobody was trampling anybody; they were just helping everybody."

Everyone was clear when the beams that had supported the roof collapsed onto the bleachers.

"If God wasn't there, I don't know who was," Howell said. "It could have be devastating for anybody."

It's amazing no one was injured once they left the stands, she added. Owners couldn't hold their horses, so several animals were running in a panic around the arena.

Lynne Undraitis told her daughters, Kayla and Kayde, not to touch their horses and to take cover by their trailer.

They were crouched next to it when the roof flew toward them. It struck their gray horse, Ice Charger, on the back and knocked him to his knees on the other side of the trailer.

Another horse, their beloved buckskin Bounty, was knocked out in the confusion. He went into shock and died in about 10 minutes.

A day later, Undraitis was still stunned. She'd owned Bounty for most of his 18 years.

"He was the greatest horse anybody could ever wish for," she said, crying. "He was a family member. It hasn't even really hit us that he's not there."

Ice Charger was luckier. His lungs collapsed when the roof struck him, but he likely will recover. He made it safely through the first - and most difficult - night.

Undraitis had ridden him at the competition earlier Wednesday evening but had left the saddle on so her daughter could ride him later. That probably saved Ice Charger's life, she said.

"My saddle pretty much has a hole going through it," she said.

Even while the storm continued to rage around them, people were scrambling around Undraitis and her daughters, trying to help the horses and gather up tack that was blowing all over the lot.

"All of this was very dramatic, and it was fast and it was dangerous," she said, "but we had so many people helping us."

"There was a lot of great men there," Howell agreed. "There's usually not a lot of men at barrel races. And there were a lot of great gals that kept their cool."

People ran to grab loose horses and tack and to get children out of the wind. When Howell reached her pickup, two kids she didn't know, both around 4 or 5 years old, were crying inside the cab.

"They were in there, just screaming, and a woman was telling them to stay there," she said. "She didn't know who they belonged to.

"The little boy was wailing, 'I don't want the world to come to an end! I don't want the world -' And I said, 'Honey, it's not going to come to an end. It's going to be OK.'"

After about 20 minutes, the storm blew itself out. Those who hadn't already managed to round up their horses did so. Some left their tack behind, so others gathered it up for them.

Even though everyone was desperate to leave, there wasn't pandemonium while leaving the arena, Valentine said.

"Everybody was really respectful driving out," she said. "It wasn't mass hysteria. People were really respectful, helping each other."

A day later, Howell was able to laugh about the storm but said she will never forget how terrifying it was.

"That's something you see on television," she said, "not something you're looking for in Kalispell."

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com