WARREN — For many of the people who attended the standing-room-only discussion of the 40th anniversary of the May 31, 1985, tornado Saturday at the Warren-Trumbull County Public Library, their disaster experience felt more recent than a distant event.

“It was my last day of sixth grade and we were at Waddell Park in Niles for a baseball game. I heard a man yell, ‘tornado!’ There was no warning. It was just there,” Vicki Billey of Niles said.

Across the street from the park, a tornado touched down at Republic Steel.

“We went to check on my great-grandmother at Eastwood Arms apartments, but we were not allowed in there,” Billey continued.

The apartment complex had been hit by the tornado.

They walked through the Niles Union Cemetery, which was severely hit by the tornado. The firemen at

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