Thirty-five years ago, Terry Tamblyn’s daughter was on a tennis court at Oswego High School when the news broke that a severe storm was headed toward Oswego.

Fortunately, her coach quickly directed the students inside the building before the storm arrived.

“It took all of the fencing around the tennis courts and wound it up in a ball and put it right next to my little Honda Civic,” said Tamblyn, who was the superintendent of Oswego School District 308 at the time.

Aug. 28 is the 35th anniversary of the 1990 tornado –known as the Plainfield tornado – the strongest August tornado on record in the U.S., according to the National Weather Service.

The F5 tornado started near Oswego in Kendall County before cutting through Plainfield, Crest Hill and Joliet in Will County.

A total of 29 people – none in Kendall County – were killed in the tornado and another 353 injured in Kendall and Will counties. Property damage was estimated at $165 million, including $5 million in property damage in Kendall County.

Tamblyn and his co-workers rode out the storm in a safe room in the school district’s administration center on Illinois Route 71, across the street from the high school.

“When the sky just sort of turned that eerie green, we all knew something was not right,” he said. “As we were getting into the safe room, the storm was roaring. It was loud.”

They started seeing trees blowing sideways. After the storm passed, Tamblyn saw plenty of damage, including a bus that had a three-inch black steel pipe through its hood.

The tornado also took part of the roof off Oswego High School. The district’s other high school, Oswego East High School, wasn’t built until 2004.

Kendall County Board member Dan Koukol’s house on Collins Road in Oswego was damaged in the tornado. He wasn’t at home at the time of the storm.

“It basically lifted the roof and set it back down and it blew all of the siding off it,” Koukol said. “It did quite a bit of damage. It was all rebuilt. My neighbor’s house was completely gone, basically.”

Training for an emergency

Thirty-five years ago, Kendall County Emergency Management Agency Director Roger Bonuchi was living on Joliet’s west side.

Since he didn’t live in the line of the storm, he thought it was curious that three state police cars would be rushing down his street.

“And then the phone rang and it was my mom, who lived in Missouri,” Bonuchi said. “And she asked if I was OK. I said, ‘What are you talking about? What do you mean?’ And she told me that a tornado had hit Plainfield. So that’s how I knew about it.”

Bonuchi has been in his current position since 2020 after retiring from the Plainfield Emergency Management Agency following a 19-year stint as a volunteer. He is a Plainfield resident.

At the time of the tornado, he was not involved in emergency management. He has been a longtime ham radio operator, however.

“I was listening to everything that was going on during the tornado,” Bonuchi said.

In his capacity, he knows the importance of making sure that the public takes seriously when severe weather is approaching.

“You try to train the public to take shelter and care for themselves,” he said.

Kendall County offers a Community Emergency Response Team program that educates people about disaster preparedness.

“People can care for themselves and their own neighbor in case a tornado hits their neighborhood,” Bonuchi said.

Kendall County Emergency Management Agency also wants to make sure it is as prepared as it can be to response to any emergency, including a tornado as strong as the 1990 Plainfield tornado.

“We’ve got an emergency operations plan that is updated every two years for the county, which outlines everything we would do,” he said. “It’s not a tactical manual, it’s more like a resource manual that says how we would approach this.”

And they also have better technology on their hands today compared to 35 years ago.

“The National Weather Service didn’t have the ability to see the wind shear that they have today,” Bonuchi said. “And also today, we’ve got something called the National Weather Service Chat. Everybody shares the information that they have."