April 2, 2021 – West Bend, WI – Sunday, April 4 will be 40 years since a tornado struck West Bend. It happened in the middle of the night on April 4, 1981. Members of the West Bend Fire Department remember the call.
“It was a long night… a very long night.”
“The train had just gone through and I thought… the trains coming through again,” said Mike Tennies. “The fire department did a great job along with the police department.”
“I was at home and thought it was just a fire call and I didn’t know what we had until I got to the station and then it was all hands on deck,” said James Hodge. “A lot of the equipment had flat tires. We were up there changing tires on equipment. It was a long cold night.”
Click HERE to see the report from the American Meteorological Society.
Janet Meisenheimer was a nurse at St. Joseph’s Hospital in West Bend in 1981 when the tornado hit the north side of the community. “The code was Dr. Blue or Dr. White and that meant to be prepared for bad storms in the area,” she said. “A little bit after midnight there was a baby delivered … but on the outside the storm was hitting badly.”
Staff made plans to evacuate and “we lined up all the cribs of the babies just in case we had to go to a lower floor.”
Janet Meisenheimer also remembered how vital the nuns were to the hospital. They lived on site in a small dormitory and they always were on call. Meisenheimer remembered Sr. Loretta and how critical she was when it came to delivering babies.
Click HERE for a photo gallery from Badger Firefighters Association.
