MACOMB COUNTY, Mich. – The utility trucks and contractors were lined up 24 hours after a surprise tornado ran wild through the quiet neighborhood near 14 Mile and Garfield roads.
“I was at work, and my neighbor called me, and he told me, I gotta get home right now,” Dave Rose, whose home on Regal Dr. took a direct hit from the twister, said. “Half of my roof is in the middle of the street, and at that point, I knew it was serious.”
Rose’s home was hit by the 29th tornado to touchdown in the state of Michigan this year.
On Thursday (June 19) afternoon, the National Weather Service deemed it an EF-0, the lowest on the Fujita Scale, with winds of 70 mph.
The tornado spun up just after 1 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon. The twister was 400 yards wide and traveled for nearly 2 ½ miles with estimated winds of 70 mph.
It caused damage to about 20 homes and left a trail of debris destruction through this neighborhood.
In a cruel twist, the tornado plowed through Rose’s house while leaving nearly every surrounding house largely unscathed.
“The ceiling is actually really bowed and wet, and it’s starting to crack,” Rose said. “They’re trying to get everything out of there right now before it caves in.”
The storm left dozens of trees shredded, power lines down, tore shingles off roofs, and even tossed trampolines around.
Utility workers spent the day installing new electrical poles and stringing wiring as half of the neighborhood remained without power.
“I talked to this guy last night,” Deron Nowicki, another resident who lives two blocks away from Rose, said. “They had power, but he was out.”
Nowicki was driving home from work when he got a call from his wife that the tornado was on the ground.
By the time he made it back, trees were down in the streets in Macomb County.
“You couldn’t even go down the street last night,” Nowicki said. “But they got that cleaned up. I couldn’t even walk. You couldn’t drive down any of these streets. I had come in over here, and I had to drive all the way around to get to my house.”
While Nowicki’s home was spared major damage — the house’s roof lost a few shingles — Dave Rose spent the day on the phone with insurance companies. But he was still thankful.
“There’s nothing good to come out of it,” Rose said as rain fell through the hole in his ceiling. “The only thing that I’m lucky on is no one was home, my boys weren’t here, and one in the neighborhood got hurt.”
