A woman was killed by flying debris when a storm, possibly a tornado, struck the Route 66 town of Cuba, Mo., on Saturday evening.
According to KTVI-TV in St. Louis, the fatality was Kayla Martin, 28, who was sitting in her car at the Alps grocery.
Crawford County Coroner Paul Hutson said debris shattered Martin’s windshield and struck her in the chest. She had been talking to her brother who was parked next to her. They both were taken to Phelps County Hospital in Rolla where Ms Martin was pronounced dead. Her brother’s injuries were not life threatening. Hutson said Martin was the mother of two children including a newborn and worked as the manager of the town’s Phillips 66 station.
The winds flattened trees and power lines, and power was out in much of the city Saturday night. According to the Sullivan Journal in nearby Sullvan, Mo.:
Debris was scattered from the Voss Truck Port north of I-44 south to the historic mural section of Washington Street/Old Route 66, where an Alps Foods store was severely damaged. Just down the street from Alps, the local U.S. Post Office was also damaged.
Connie Echols, owner of the Wagon Wheel Motel in Cuba, reported that her historic Route 66 motel suffered no storm damage except for downed tree limbs and power outages to two buildings. She said she knew of no other Route 66 landmarks in town that sustained damage.
Echols said electricity in much of the town had been restored by Sunday morning.
UPDATE: The Rolla Daily News posted this video:
We arrived in Cuba just after it happened. The town is a mess. The room we were originally going to get at the Wagon Wheel had no power so Connie gave us another for the same price.
Update: We left Cuba around 7:30am going towards Devil’s Elbow but came back to Cuba (Fanning first) on our way back. We drove right past the post office & the Alps grocery store. As a community, Cuba got the roads cleared very quickly, though many houses had trees branches everywhere.