Wichita ? The white rope tornado hammered the two-story, 100-year-old house in Harper County, blasting glass, straw and leaves into the home and wrenching the roof and walls so badly that Kleenex tissues were later found between the walls and the ceilings.

Emergency crews raced toward the farmhouse to see whether anyone had been hurt — only to be brought to a standstill by the vehicles of people who had come out to see the tornado.

Precious minutes ticked away as the crews pleaded with gawkers to move so they could get to the house.

Two weeks later, so many people and vehicles clogged roads in Sumner County hoping to see tornadoes that authorities shut down Kansas Highway 15 after a tornado struck just south of Mulvane. They urged people to stay out of the area.

Veteran storm spotters and severe-weather photographers say tornado chasing has become an increasingly popular spectator sport in Kansas.

“We had hundreds — and I do mean hundreds — of people that were in the area who had no reason, no business, no purpose in being there,” said James Fair, Sumner County’s director of emergency management. “It was very frustrating.

“What people apparently don’t understand is that if that was a loved one of theirs who was trapped in a home, they would be livid if they found out that the ambulance or the fire department could not get to the home to get them out of a collapsed structure.”

Cheering crowds

Jim Reed, a severe-weather photographer who has tracked storms for a Wichita television station, said the crowds filling even rural roads and intersections June 12 in Sumner County were cheering as a tornado churned dangerously close to Mulvane.

“I wanted to roll down my window and say, ‘Do you realize someone could die in the next 10 minutes?”‘ Reed said.

Emergency management officials say it’s only a matter of time before people die because emergency crews are unable to get to them in time because the roads are blocked by “tornado tourists.”

Or they blunder into a tornado’s path because they don’t know what to watch for or what to do in a crisis.

Or they are in accidents triggered by inattention during threatening weather.

Several times this spring, officials said, people have been watching the sky so intently that they ended up driving into a ditch.

Mike Loreg, Harper County emergency management director, said he saw people drive up to power lines downed by a tornado that was still visible in the distance, get out and try to move them so they could get closer to the twister.

He’s talked to a man who bragged about getting so close to a tornado that it spun his vehicle around.

“Those are the types of guys I’m worried about,” Loreg said.

Only getting worse

Jon Davies, a Wichita weather researcher who has been tracking tornadoes since 1991, said the mania that erupted on roadways during severe weather events was “worse than I’ve ever seen it.”

“I’m less concerned about somebody getting hurt in the tornado than somebody getting hurt in an accident or running somebody over,” Davies said.

And it’s probably only going to get worse.

The movie “Twister” created a new generation of storm chasers, and the proliferation of dramatic tornado videos shot in recent years “is just creating more interest,” said Don North, news director at the CBS affiliate in Wichita.

Complaint calls are common when a station has to break into regular programming with frequent weather alerts, he said. But when the station had “wall-to-wall coverage” of the threatening weather on May 29 and June 12, he said, few people called to complain.

On May 29, North said, “we had four tornadoes live on the air between 7:30 and 8:30. Some people would think it’s great theater. It was incredible.”