When tornadoes tormented the Pittsburgh region

Jeannine Borelli holds her head as she listens to radio coverage of the storm that removed the third floor of her house on William Street on the north slope of Mount Washington. (Steve Mellon/Post-Gazette)

Former Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy, left, tours the Mount Washington section with former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge a day following the tornadoes. (Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press)

A teenager peers skyward to look at an airplane circling over Salisbury, Pa. The teenager was with a group of people recovering household utensils from the second story kitchen of a building a block from PA 219 in central Salisbury. Buildings in the town were heavily damaged by high winds Sunday evening. (VWH Campbell Jr./Post-Gazette)

The tornado crossed over a funeral home (upper right) and destroyed garages and residences east of PA 219 Salisbury, Pa. The path of the tornado was approximately right to left as seen in this photo. (Matt Freed/Post-Gazette)

His arm in a sling and his eye blackened, Wayne Miller surveys tornado damage to his farm near Salisbury, Pa. (VWH Campbell Jr./Post-Gazette)

Wayne Miller and his family join volunteers from Mennonite Disaster Services for a meeting before lunch on the day the volunteers framed in a barn to replace a barn destroyed June 2, 1998, by a tornado near Salisbury, Pa. (VWH Campbell Jr./Post-Gazette)

Workers begin the clean-up at a damaged business in Mount Washington on June 3, 1998. (Gary Tramontina/Associated Press)

That’s how Dana Barker of William Street in Mount Washington described the sound of the tornado that tormented her neighborhood on June 2, 1998.

It was one of 14 that struck the region between 5:30 and 9:30 p.m. that day.

The tornadoes were prefaced by terrible thunderstorms spanning all the way from Ohio to Maryland. The first funnel touched down in Raccoon in Beaver County. The twister continued to travel and terrified residents of Pittsburgh who were merely trying to carry on their nightly routines.

Former Pittsburgh police Sgt. Richard Carlson headed to Mount Washington to see the damage after the first tornado hit. The devastation was much more than the bruises he expected.

“When I got up there, I (had) never expected the kind of devastation I found up there,” Carlson reported to the Post-Gazette. “I had no idea how much damage this thing was causing. I took a look around and then I called for every supervisor in the world.”

The tornado continued its path of destruction through Hazelwood, Rankin and Donegal, Westmoreland County, at 7:05 p.m. Margaret Smith, a Hazelwood resident at the time, told the Post-Gazette that she was preparing to make a coffee when a maple tree crashed through her house forcing her to crawl through a hole to safety.

“I screamed; I screamed and cried but no one could hear me,” Smith said at the time.

This was just one of many heart-wrenching stories told after the funnels barreled through Pittsburgh suburbs.

As the storms came to an end, a calmness set over the city and people felt the worst was over. The night proceeded as it normally would with a Pirates game. The city was able to breathe for only a short moment before warnings of another twister rolled through. It hit Seven Springs first and finally passed through Salisbury before heading to Maryland.

The photos above depict some of the tragedy captured after these twisters hit 18 years ago. The residents of an area rarely hit by such natural disasters were shocked.

Mother nature left her unexpected mark on Pittsburgh on this horrific day in 1998.