Sam Sessa didn’t notice the tornado until he stepped outside of Hornbake Library.
“The sky was green, like this yellowish green,” Sessa, then a freshman at the University of Maryland, recalled. “I’d never seen the sky look like that in my life before.”
Twenty years ago on Sept. 24, a tornado tore through the University of Maryland campus, whipping 200 mph winds, tearing through the University Courtyards apartments and destroying about 300 cars. The storm left two dead, sisters Colleen and Erin Marlatt.
Patricia Marlatt remembers the last hug her daughter gave her. The day before Colleen died, Patricia was standing in the kitchen when, out of the blue, Colleen gave her a hug.
“That hug was just so precious,” she said, her voice cracking.
The next day, her husband, Patrick Marlatt, saw the girls off from the temporary Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute on University Boulevard. After they left, their car was taken into the air near Denton Hall and thrown into the trees across the road.