By Daniel Winningham
While much of the attention of the thunderstorms and tornadoes — five confirmed by the National Weather Service — were devoted to the St. Mary area earlier this week as well as Frederickton and Chester, for residents residing near the Perry County Sportsman Club in the vicinity of where Madison, St. Francois and Perry counties all come together, Sunday evening’s storm may have hit a little too close to home.
The Perry County Emergency 911 kept residents informed of the situation. “Tornado warning – take cover now” was the directive at 9:19 p.m. Just seven minutes later, a similar message went out on the county’s Nixle alert system, alerting citizens to “take cover now!!” and that the storm was near Womack, moving northeast at 50 mph.
Kelly and Lonnie Orf live in a home on the north side of PCR 738, which is up a wooded hillside.
The Sheriff’s and Fire Department was on scene Oct. 24, checking the roadway, Orf noted.
Kelly Orf said they lost power while in the cellar.
While she probably could have waited out the storm at her home, that wasn’t an option in Sunday’s scenario.
“I would not have stayed in my house,” she said, stating she was concerned for her mother-in-law.
“(On television), they were showing the angle and everything and we knew it was coming right toward us,” she noted. “That’s when we said, ‘We need to go to the cellar.’ We had to basically make (my mother-in-law) go (to the cellar).”
The direction the storm was traveling prompted all three of them to seek shelter.
“When we heard it was coming straight from Fredericktown, we heard Junction City and that usually means it comes right to us,” she said. We went down to the cellar.
Once secured in the concrete cellar, the wait began for the storm to move through.
“We were down there about 10 minutes and it just started roaring,” she said. “We heard a big bang. We sat there for a little bit because the lightning was so bad. We opened the door back up, we saw a tree on the pick up.”
Time almost seemed to be standing still, according to Kelly Orf.
“It felt like it stayed over us forever,” Kelly said. “It was midnight before we got out of the cellar and we went down there at about quarter ‘til nine. When we were able to get out, you could barely walk (because of the trees and power lines).”
While there was a significant amount of “cosmetic damage,” with the downed trees, debris and power lines, Kelly was grateful no one was hurt.
“What was really neat was how quickly the fire department got out here.”
The area also was hit by a large amount of lightning, though for Orf not knowing where the storm was headed was another concern.
“It was bad,” she said, referring to the lightning. “What’s bad about living out here, and I’ll be honest, is that we have no cell phone service. If the electric is out, we really don’t know if we’re safe to leave. We knew another storm was coming and right when we were ready to leave, it hit again.”
Orf was thankful for all the help getting things cleaned up Monday morning.
“I’m grateful, I appreciate it,” she said. “I just don’t think anybody realizes how bad it was hit out here.”
With very limited or no cellular phone service at all, it can be difficult to stay in touch in the event of an emergency.
“We should have a weather radio, we really should,” Orf said.
Orf couldn’t believe the number of downed trees when she assessed the damage early Monday morning.
“I was just dumbfounded,” said Kelly Orf. “I was in shock. I had no idea it would be this bad.
Monday morning, a generator hooked up to her husband’s semi was able to power the fridge and freeze inside the home, while the wait continued for power to be restored.
“He wasn’t supposed to be home,” Orf said. “(Tuesday, Oct. 26 is) our 30th wedding anniversary and he surprised me. He came home early. I’m just grateful he was home or it would’ve been just me and my mother-in-law and two dogs.”
Alvin Mullins, a resident on PCR 738, lives about a half mile west of the Whitewater River and Highway BB in the Thompson Holler area. He was watching TV and fell asleep when the power went out. His shelter, a converted garage, did not have a basement, so seeking protection in a lower area wasn’t an option.
“It was over by the time I found out anything was going on,” he said. “I could sleep through a hurricane. Well, I just did.”
Mullins went outside after the storm passed through the area and said it was a mess.
“This road was totally blocked,” he said. “The Sheriff’s Department and some other departments (cleared it).”
Mullins was assessing the damage to three vehicles parked outside his residence.
Eventually, he moved his white Buick beneath his carport.
A tree broke out the back window, and he didn’t want any more rain getting in the vehicle’s interior.
“I just put a motor in that truck yesterday,” he said, pointing to a white truck. A large tree fell on the vehicle’s bed, putting a large dent above the rear passenger’s side wheel well.
The vehicle closest to his residence, a Ford Focus, did not have any damage.
“That car’s junk, and it didn’t get a scratch,” he said. “I’m grateful that I didn’t get hurt.”
On Monday morning, Mullins describing the storm system as it passed through.
“When the lights went out it wasn’t that bad,” he said. “When the electric goes out, the phones go out.”
Mullins said it would be a group effort to work through the clean up process.
David Holmes has lived on PCR 738 since the late 1970s. He said astorm came through about a decade ago and damaged portions of the Sportsman’s Club. Sunday evening, he was monitoring the storm on television.
“Until the electric went off, the TV told us it was coming through Fredericktown, it was a huge storm,” Holmes said. “They had three on the ground at one time, this was a monster tornado and it’s hitting Madison, Perry and Ste. Gen (counties), and then the electric went off.”
Holmes doesn’t own a weather radio and opted to not seek shelter in the lowest area of his home.
“We have a basement but we didn’t have time to (go downstairs),” he said. “I just stayed in the house, I prayed. Me and my wife, we’re both Christians and the name of Jesus protected us. Thank God, we’ve got a home and roof yet, you know. It seemed like it lasted forever but (it probably was) five minutes. It sounded like two freight trains coming together.”
In the aftermath, Holmes wasn’t worried, despite a mass of trees blocking PCR 738 and his way out to Missouri State Highway BB.
“I’ll be alright, I depend on the good Lord,” Holmes said. “I think he protected us. There are so many trees down up there, great big trees (that have) been here my whole life.”
It seemed precarious when the storm was passing through.
“When the house started shaking I felt like the whole house was gonna blow up or come apart,” Holmes said. “We were fortunate.”
There was no roof damage to his home.
Perry County Road and Bridge staff, including Mark Hoehn, Chris Carlisle, Gary Basler and Markus Bazzanella were among those who assisted on PCR 738. Bazzanella said the crew was initially called out about 10 p.m.
“We ran around, checking county roads with the sheriff’s department, tree down here, tree down there, we run chain saws to at least get the road open and then we heard that Thompson Holler (was) messed up real bad, lots of trees down,” he said. “We can only do so much. We got roads primarily opened up where if emergency vehicles needed to get through they would be able to do so, school buses and things like that.”
“We were keeping out fingers crossed and hoping that nothing would happen but it did and so we ran out cut up limbs, opened up the road.
“Apparently, it is bad through here. Luckily, it’s just a dead end road.”
“Our first call came in around 9:31 p.m. from a resident of St. Mary, who said his house and truck were destroyed,” said Perry County Sheriff Gary Schaaf.
That initial 911 call was forwarded to Ste. Genevieve. Schaaf said his department then got busy with calls in Perry County.
“The (storm) cell had moved along the county’s western border, crossing Highway J and Thompson Holler,” he said. “We had to wait for a tree to be cleared on Highway T before we could get to Thompson Holler (PCR 738). While Highway BB had a number of trees in the roadway, none of them completely blocked the road and we were able to get around or through them.”
Schaaf confirmed that it took several hours to get all the residences checked in the area.
Not counting Sunday’s alleged twister in southwestern Perry County, the area has had 12 tornadoes touch down since April 1996, according to the National Weather Service. Four twisters occurred Sept. 22, 2006 and two were reported March 11, 2006.
Going back further, Perry County has had a reported 56 tornadoes since 1956 though Sunday’s tornado was the first one which occurred in October since an EF-1 tornado passed through Oct. 24, 1967.
Prior to Sunday evening, there were 33 tornadoes that either originated or passed through Madison County, including eight in the past decade. Of those six occurred in the afternoon hours of May 25, 2011. In the past 25 years, just four of the tornadoes in that area have led to injuries. The length of those storms ranged from 0.7 to 47.41 miles.
