HAYSVILLE, Kan. (KAKE) - Haysville is still recovering after so much changed 25 years ago when an F-4 tornado tore through the town. Six people died and the town was unrecognizable. Survivors and city leaders met to remember and look at the progress they have made in rebuilding.  

A gas station is one building that's still standing after the tornado hit. 

People who survived 25 years ago say it is still fresh in their minds.  

“I am grateful I am alive because I could have lost my life that day,” said Carol Harris.

Harris was driving in Haysville when that F-4 tornado struck, on May 3, 1999.

“It took all of my windows in my vehicle, except my windshield. 

My foot was on the break the whole time. It actually turned my car in the other direction. I was going east and it turned it west,” said Harris.

Harris says she didn't come out with a single scratch.

Chelsea Frazier, a teenager at the time, also experienced the tornado.

“I just remember my family yelling we need to take cover, there's a big tornado on the way. And we took off running in the backyard,” said Frazier. 

The tornado was on the ground for 24 miles, killing 6 people, and was part of a wave of storms that took more than 50 lives between Kansas and Oklahoma. 

Della Shafer has called Haysville “home" since 1960. She turned 93 on Friday, just as she turned 68 on the day of the deadly tornado.  

“When I walked downtown and it was just rubble. We of course lost our electricity and our water. And had to go to a restaurant to go to the bathroom for a while,” said Shafer.

“We're hit by a tornado, and life throws us under in Haysville Kansas. My little part-time job as mayor became a full-time job for me. I left my work at Target. I didn't retire, I just quit and spent two years trying to recover the town,” said Tim Norton, who was the Mayor of Haysville at the time of the tornado. 

The tornado also hit South Wichita as well. 

Twenty-five years later, it's important to remember what happened, the lives lost and the constant danger of what severe weather can bring.