Jeb Posted August 20, 2005 Report Share Posted August 20, 2005 Tornado Survivors Tell Their Stories http://nbc15.madison.com/home/headlines/1783257.html I just finished working for the day( roughly 6:00pm) here at home when I noticed a wall cloud to our west. A wall cloud drops from a thunderstorm as a precursor to a tornado. I'm traveling west on our road and the wall cloud is ahead of me and to the north roughly 1/2 mile. I pull over because I noticed some rotation beginning. I watched the funnel cloud form and called 911 and to report it. The dispatcher asked if it was on the ground. At almost that instant, debris was noticable around the rotation, so I advised yes it's on the ground. The debris was the remains of someone's house. I tracked the tornado as it moved due east paralleling our road. It destroyed our neighbor's house and a rural subdivision near us but our house is intact. It missed us by about 1/4 mile to the north. They lived further off the road, so they were in the path. After the tornado passed US51 to the east, I turned north to provide whatever assisitance I could. Any kind of meaningful mutual aid wasn't in the area yet. The first situation I came upon was at the intersection of US51 and County Rd B. There was one Stoughton cop there and about three cars in various stages of destruction. He asked that I check one of the cars he hadn't gotten to. It turns out no one was in the cars. We figured they got deposited there by the storm. I left there and went north on 51. The first house I came to was totally decimated. I arrived at the same time as a sheriffs deputy and we checked the debris for survivors. There was no response. Debris had punctured the propane tank and it was leaking along with wires down. The storm took out the local substation, so all the lines were dead. A few minutes later McFarland fire arrived on mutual aid and I advised them of the situation and took off. The area to the east along Geihler Drive was destroyed. Technically, this area is north of the city limits of Stoughton, but everyone considers it part of Stoughton. The area had numerous gas leaks amongst the rumble. I ended up directing traffic to block a road keeping people out. You know me, there was no one available to do it, so I took it upon myself to do it. I put on my best Lt Karay voice and no one ever questioned my authority to do it. One guy threatened me and I told him he could proceed at his own risk but that he would be back in a minute because he can't get through. Sure enough, about a minute later, here he comes tail between his legs. Some sheriffs deputies came by and I explained and they said fine, keep doing what you're doing. They were stretched too thin. After about two hours, I was relieved by a state trooper. I went and offered my services at the fire station. They had plenty of mutual aid by then so I ended up volunteering at the Red Cross evacuation center until about 12:30am. One encouraging sign, for humanity anyway, was there were more people volunteering than victims. Many of the displaced people have relatives in the area which helped to minimize the number of evacuees at the center. Initially, the storm was rated an F3 and the weather is setting up again today for a possible repeat. It's amazing some of the oddball things you see after the storm passes. Our neighbors house was basically destroyed (attached garage gone, attached room in the back gone, most of the roof taken off), but all of the windows were intact. From news reports, it seems that paper, shingles, mail, etc. from Stoughton started coming down roughly 50 miles to our east in Waukesha County, a western suburb of Milwaukee. There were pieces of trees impaled several feet deep into the ground. Trees three feet in diameter were snapped about five feet off the ground like they were twigs. I talked to a few people that have lived here the majority of their lives and they had never seen a tornado before. We live here for six years and get to be up close and personal with one. Go figure. John Raena and I live just a few houses away from where the tornado hit… we were some of the first people on the scene, and we drove a man and his little 3 and 5 year old girls as well as another little girl to safety right after the storm hit, and we realized the extent of the devastation: here is our story… so a tornado blew through yesterday.. i heard it coming. sounded like a freight train literally coming... raena said "what is that sound?" i said, "that's a tornado!" looked out the window and the lake (Lake Kegonsa) was swelling and spinning... boats at their docks were 90 degree angles... and i saw our canoe take off into the air... we are lucky it did not come through the window into our faces... i couldn't believe what i was seeing... i opened the windows a crack so they wouldn't blow out, as we could feel the pressure in our eardrums. as soon as i opened the window i could feel everything SUCK out of the house... no windows shattered thank god... then, as the wind started to subside, i opened the front door to look outside and saw a mass of flying debris all around a tornado in the middle of it... a surfboard in the middle of the road, trees and powerlines down, and i got my video camera to film it... filmed it for a minute and then noticed that some houses on the hill (2 houses away from ours and up the hill) were missing a couple of windows. then i looked further, and one was missing a roof... got in my car, and Raena and I drove up to find two houses totally demolished, cars broken under the weight of the house falling on top of them... ALL windows smashed in... ran up to one of the doors to see if there was anyone inside. I was quite frightened that i would find someone under something... a whole side of the house was practically blown out... reached into the broken door and unlocked it and went in... to our surprise and to the homeowner's luck, no one was home... smashed down a few doors - pulled up pieces of the roof, looked under piles and piles of debris, but no one was there... the neighbrs told me that no one was home... and then i walked outside and looked down the street... the HUGE tree that was towering at the end of the street was totally pruned, as if it was cut apart or dead of old age... just before had been a tower of a living tree... and the rest of the houses down the block were LEVELED. i saw people starting to emerge into the street, and we drove over to see if we could help... these houses were MILLION DOLLAR homes on this stoughton country club's golf course. not trailers you see being devastated on TV... sturdy brick and well built for wind resistance (not tornados - as one of the homeowners told me - he had built it to withstand wind because it was on a hill with no trees - but not a tornado - his house was caved in, and a jeep that was in his driveway was more than 500 feet away flipped over and under some debris - more than 2 houses away - and these are HUGE lots)... they were leveled and totally destroyed. until we got out of that first house looking for people who may have been trapped, we did not realize the full extent of the damage... EVERYTHING from those houses over was demolished. we drove a man and his two daughters - and someone's grand-daughter down the road to another house (their grandparents' house) which was untouched... to keep the girls safe and warm... got halfway there and had to walk the rest of the way because of a downed power line... maybe another mile - each of us carrying a little girl... the girl i was carrying was in shock... didn't speak, couldn't find out her name, or her age.. but she was not crying/... tried to point out a beautiful rainbow that was forming but it had no effect... we drove back (around some downed trees up into peoples' yards - the same way we came) to see if there was anything else we could do. there were missing manhole covers all down the street, God knows where they went. there was a boat on top of what used to be a house, a steering wheel from a boat embedded in the roof of somenoe's house, and the police and rescue workers were starting to arrive... we hung around and spoke to the neighbors about their homes and everything else... i took some photos. a woman had just moved in 3 weeks ago, and she was alone. her husband was out of town... she was alone... i felt bad for her.. her name was Char. she saved her remote control and her glasses when she ran into the basement. her brother inlaw was coming to get her... all the burglar alarms of the houses were going off. there was a smell of natural gas leaking in the air, and maybe some gasoline from flipped cars... we are staying at my aunt's house now 15 miles northeast... nothing happened here. we are supposed to go to town hall today to get wristbands so we can return home to get anything that we need... no power - no water... a few minutes before the tornado hit, i was driving home from work... i would have been right directly in the path of the tornado had i not arrived at home when i did.. a few minutes later, and i would have been swept up with everything else... when i got home, Raena told me that there was as tornado watch... and i thought 'no big deal, there are always tornado watches' - but then a few minutes later it hit... we heard it coming, and we saw it after it hit... i filmed it, i saw the lake being torn up... debris flying everywhere... we are lucky it did not hit our house. we have no basement, and would have had nowhere to hide. i was in awe - i barely moved out of the way of the window when i saw the canoe fly away... if we had been hit like the houses not more than a few hundred feet away, we may have been under a ruin of what used to be a house... and who knows what would have happened to us. we are lucky... as far as we know, there is one death.. a man was in his basement and his chimney collapsed onto him... this was an old farm house across the field from the neighborhood we were in... i assume, b/c there were fire trucks/rescue trucks/police/ and ambulances over there and we couldn't get through... the houses at the end of another neighborhood just up the road (less than a mile) where my grandfather lives were completely GONE. we drove by, and Raena said "didn't there used to be houses here?" ... i had to stop and think, because i didn't recognize the street... i asked Raena if this was my grandfather's street... she said that she thought that it was... the landmarks were totally gone. no houses, mailboxes, trees, or anything... just firetrucks and rescue workers telling us to evacuate... unbelievable... totally unbelievable... glad to be alive today! Chris ps - my grandfather just called to say that someone saw the tornado jump over our house (the cottage on the lake where we are staying) and the next one and then land... it was 20 feet above us... that would account for the suction when i opened the windows... jesus christ. http://nbc15.madison.com/home/headlines/1783827.html http://nbc15.madison.com/home/headlines/1783797.html http://nbc15.madison.com/home/headlines/1781877.html http://nbc15.madison.com/home/headlines/1780792.html http://nbc15.madison.com/home/headlines/1784147.html http://nbc15.madison.com/home/headlines/1783757.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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