They say 13 people died and another 150 were injured that Friday in a small town east of Wichita, just off the interstate, a place few folks outside the area had ever bothered paying much attention to before.

Andover.

Now the very name rekindles memories of that ominous day, terrifying evening and horrible night of April 26, 1991, when emergency crews combed through the twisted trees, strewn-about appliances and obliterated mobile homes under the bright intensity of generator-powered spotlights, filling a makeshift morgue set up in a strip mall.

Impossible to forget: A man wandering through what was left of the Golden Spur Mobile Home Park, shielded only by a shiny foil blanket crumpled around his sunken shoulders, looking like a guy who just ran a marathon but without any of the joy from finishing a 26.2-mile course.

His agony had only just begun. Perhaps an hour or so earlier, he’d been huddled with his wife inside their mobile home — the sickening sound of a freight train approaching, their home soon spinning, their disorientation mounting, consciousness waning.

Seconds later — perhaps minutes, who knows? — he’d awakened to find his wife’s eyes still shut, never to open again.

“She’s gone,” the widower would tell me.

It’s been nearly 18 years since the killer storm struck, the aftermath of its F5-strength winds having pulled me into Andover from a newsroom some 70 miles away. While I still vaguely remember some scenes from the site — the hats still hanging on pegs in a garage whose other wall had been blown away; the convergence of reporters from throughout the region on day one, and from across the country for day two — it is the brief encounter with that man in the mobile home park that sticks with me.

The man had been alone, wandering through what had been his neighborhood, his silent sorrow offset only by the whirring of portable generators.

Come the arrival of each severe weather season, I remember our meeting. With the forecast of each potential tornado-spawning storm, I recall the sorrowful, shocked expression on his face.

And upon hearing the piercing whine of each warning siren, I prepare to gather my family and head to the basement.