My tornado adventure

Forada Tornado, Memorial Day weekend, 2022

By Joe Steinhagen

I don’t remember it being at all hot and muggy, just rainy. I was upstairs in the living room looking out the south-facing windows and standing in front of them. Suddenly, a tree branch came through one of the about eight windows in that row. I wasn’t really surprised because it was really windy outside and I had about 40 trees on my one-acre lot, just thought that now I’ve got something to fix. Then, all the windows on that side of the house imploded. That’s when I knew it was going to be serious.

South wall of our home was laying inside on the kitchen and living room. Contributed photo

I started to run for the basement steps, and started running down the stairs. I was about on the second from the bottom step and I saw my dog, Suzy, running as fast as she could heading to the back bedroom where the bunk beds were.

She jumped up on the bottom bunk and I joined her. There we held on to each other while the storm raged outside. I didn’t hear the freight train noise that some people do during a tornado and my ears didn’t pop like some people’s do during a tornado.

I didn’t hear the noise the house must have made while it was being torn apart, but I suppose the adrenaline was pumping so much in my body, outside senses were shut off.

When the storm was through, I started up the stairs and I thought the stairway sure was lit well. That was because there wasn’t a ceiling or a roof covering that part of the house.

I got to the top of the stairs and saw the south living room wall was caved in and the north living room was caved out on the lawn. They still haven’t found the roof to the house, figure it must be in the lake, which is about a half a block away.

Within five minutes, I heard somebody yelling my name wondering if I was in the house. Later I found out that the fire department members were looking for survivors and casualties, and from the road my place would have looked pretty tough with the house being smashed entirely and about 40 trees tore up in my yard. I had to use a chainsaw just so I could get out of my driveway.

I spent about the first four nights sleeping and eating breakfast in my camper, which was parked up at the Rose City Threshing Grounds close to Rose City. This was done until the insurance kicked in and I was put up in one of the motels (with my dog Suzy) in Alexandria. I was later moved to another motel in Alex and I was there for months.  Staying in the motels really sucked, but I suppose it beat sleeping in my pick-up.

The motel room had a small microwave and a small refrigerator in it (and I added my toaster). I lost about 15 pounds during the first five months in the motel. I stayed so long at the motel I knew some of the workers by their first name.

For awhile I had my food stuff in my friend’s (Scott) big repair shop, but the tornado removed about one-third of its roof. So when it rained, it rained in the building, but it had electricity for everything to work.

But with Scott’s shop losing it’s roof most of the buildings insulation was damaged as well. Some days when I ate lunch or supper in there it was in the 40 degrees, so I thought I’d bring my camper home from the Rose City Threshing Grounds and eat my lunches in it, but still sleep in the motel. Worked good until it got to be 20 degrees outside, then I had to move all my food stuff into the motel room.

The house was slowly put together (it’s a smaller house because I wasn’t fully insured in the wrecked house), but it’s the same size as it was 40 years ago when it was just built as a walk-out basement.

The house was pretty much totally destroyed and the two garages, which are 50 feet from the house, received one dent in each building.

I have four lawn sheds that are just sitting on cement blocks (not anchored) and they never even wiggled, and they are about 100 feet from the house.

I had about 40 trees on my lot, now I have about three big ones left. I had a landscaping outfit remove the trees and stumps and sort of level the lot, somewhat.

The contractor was concerned with all the rain water that made it into the basement, so he went downstairs and removed a piece of paneling and, he was right, the sheet rock was black with mold.

So the whole basement was stripped down to the 2x4 studs, then the whole basement was spray sanitized to kill the mold. It also was completely rewired.