Dear Fireworks Friends: Last night, May 10, we at Red Rhino Fireworks were struck here in our home with a devastating tornado. With many of you in town for the weekend taking shelter in the east end of our warehouse you saw first hand the power and devastation. Fortunately and through God’s blessing we were all spared. Unfortunately and tearfully so, many of our close neighbors were not. A reported EF4 tornado struck around 6pm 1.5 miles south of our warehouse location and moved down Highway 43 in a southerly direction. It took the lives of many people in the area. As such, and without any regret we were unable to complete our demo weekend. Due to the disaster that had just struck it was neither appropriate nor conceivable that we could continue on with a fireworks celebration amidst such greater suffering as that which was happening, essentially, next door. While many of us were disappointed in what happened we could collectively see that we were still very fortunate to have escaped this storm with only hail damage from pieces up to baseball size. No warnings were issued as the storm built SW of Wichita, Kansas beginning at 3:15 pm from literally nothing. It moved into our area only a few hours later and was moving in speeds of 60 mph. The tornado that struck ripped through SW Cherokee County Kansas, NE Ottawa County Oklahoma, and then right towards us in NW Newton County, in minutes. It carved a path of rapid and intense destruction and took the lives of 20 people confirmed as of this morning, May 11, 2008. Our hearts and prayers go out to those who were left with nothing as a result of this event but despair, sadness and great loss. Our demo will be held on May 17th and will include a product demonstration and ending show dedicated to the people of our area. All are invited to attend this event. For those of you who were here with us this weekend who cannot make the return journey we will be producing and forwarding to you a DVD copy of the event. In times of darkness there must be light. Fireworks folks are a tight knit group, we band together well in times of adversity. We use our tools to pay tribute to a great many things. This time it will be done for those who have suffered and for those, like us, who were gracefully spared. Respectfully yours, Steve Houser and our Red Rhino Fireworks Team |