Rawhide Energy Station’s final unit was on schedule May 22 when a tornado tore through the area served by northern Colorado’s Platte River Power Authority. The storm cost the utility dearly in terms of equipment damage and it shredded a schedule predicated on a power-delivery contract date of May 23. More importantly, it almost cost the life of senior project engineer Bill Emslie.

EMSLIE

After the tornado warning was lifted at the utility’s power station, Emslie drove 14 miles to check on the horses and cattle on his farm.

“When I got there the wind was fierce,” Emslie says. The barn roof had already taken damage, but he hurried up into the loft to secure the doors. “Suddenly, I heard a large roar and looked out the doors of the loft and watched as a swirling mass of debris swept over my neighbor’s house.”

In horror, he saw their garage explode. “The funnel and whirling debris moved toward our barn with me in the loft. Realizing this was a life-or-death moment, I went down from the loft and out the door. During those few seconds, I realized every decision I made about my escape would be critical to my survival,” he says.

“I remembered an irrigation ditch we used just north of the barn and decided that I would head for that ditch. I ran toward it. Within seconds, the swirling mass overtook me and the wind became so fierce I knew that if I didn’t drop to the ground I would be swept up into the vortex,” says Emslie.

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“I was halfway between the barn and the ditch when I could feel the uplifting force. I was passing a stack of trusses and immediately dove behind them. As I lay on the ground, a truss peeled off from the pile, then another. I could hear the destruction all around me,” he says. Then it passed. The horses and the cattle were all right, but the barn was about 20% destroyed.

“Our 30-ft trailer was on its side, and our camper had gone airborne,” he says. “It must have flown right by me. It went several hundred feet and ended up...impaled on a fence post.”

The next day Emslie was back at work, helping to get power flowing down the lines again. While construction on the station’s new unit had already been finished, testing could not be completed until Xcel Energy repaired two damaged transmission lines, PRPA officials say.