Tornado in Eagle

A little after 9pm on Monday, June 21, a tornado came through our neighborhood.  They were telling us on TV that some severe weather was coming, but they say that all the time and often tend to over exaggerate, so we weren’t paying that much attention.  We got some amazing lightning and really loud claps of thunder, along with some rain.  Cory and I were watching the lightning from the garage and then from the back door.  Then it pretty much let up, and we thought it was over – until the wind really starting picking up.  Chairs on the deck started falling over, and the grill started rolling the other way.  Rain started whipping in the windows, and Cory’s fan blew out of his.  So we started running around closing windows, and Jeffrey went to close the garage door.  And then the power went out, and he yelled, “Get to the basement!”  I grabbed my computer (I have my priorities), and Cory and I went down the pitch-dark stairs to the basement – but Jeffrey didn’t come, because he was still closing the garage door.  Finally he came down, and we just listened to the wind whip around outside.

When it was over, we came back upstairs, but couldn’t really see much since it was dark.  The neighbors across the street had a gas leak, so they came over to get away from our house, and we tried to flag down a fire truck or somebody to get the gas turned off.  There were several emergency vehicles going by and already about a block over.  They finally got one stopped, and once they were aware of the leak, the officials told us we had to evacuate the neighborhood.  We were supposed to go to the fire station, but we came across downed trees and power lines and couldn’t get there.  Finally we found someone who said to go to the Village Hall and that it was safe to walk that direction.  There was a tree completely blocking the street, but we could get around it by walking up someone’s driveway and between their vehicles.  There were branches and other debris in the streets the rest of the way, but nothing major and no power lines, so we made it safely to the Village Hall where they had a generator set up to run a couple lights.  We were there for a little while, until they told us the gas had been turned off, and we could go home.  On the way home we found that the tree that had been blocking the street had already been cleared.

There were so many people out in the streets, going from house to house, checking on all the neighbors.  The fire department was going through, also going from house to house making sure everyone was accounted for.  Several news crews were in town and fire trucks and police cars from every surrounding community.  My friend Mary called me about the time we were walking home from the Village Hall and said she’d heard that 6 houses had been destroyed.  In the dark, though, it was hard to really assess the damage and get an idea of how bad it was.  The neighbors across the street, the ones who’d had the gas leak, had the side of their house and garage ripped off as well as several broken windows.  They had to have some friends come pick them up, because they couldn’t even get their cars out of the garage.   Our house seemed fine - Cory’s window was broken, but only the outer glass, and something hit the end of the house and punched into the drywall in our bedroom, but not all the way through – so we didn’t have to go anywhere and eventually got to bed. 

First thing Tuesday morning, the news helicopters began circling, and it was time to really assess the damage…