Clem Schultz thought this storm was going to be like the others.
When the Weather Service issued the tornado warning for his Fairdale, Ill., community, he didn’t think the twister would strike them. He estimated that it would pass just south of the tiny rural neighborhood — population: 152.
But he knew from previous storms like this one that the power was almost certain to go out that night on April 9, 2015. So the 85-year-old left his wife, Geri, in the kitchen and went upstairs to get some camping lanterns that they could use for light.
The view from the bedroom window was ideal, and Schultz decided he would stay there to film the tornado as it passed. But it didn’t just pass. And by the time it became clear that the twister was headed right for the house, it was too late to get back downstairs to his wife, Schultz told the Daily Herald. It was pointless to attempt to reach their tiny storm cellar.
[The deadly Fairdale tornado destroyed everything in its path]
So he continued to film as the massive tornado — later rated a devastating EF-4 by the National Weather Service — obliterated everything in its path, including the couple’s home.
He saw the neighbor’s house being destroyed; trees are ripped from their trunks and power lines are hurled from the ground. Then it hits the Schultz house. The screen goes black, but the sound of the storm continues — a bloodcurdling, monstrous howl.
It’s incredible that Schultz survived given the account that Susan Sarkauskas at the Daily Herald describes:
In an instant the tornado passed right through — literally — his house. Schultz rode the debris from the collapsing chimney down, losing his grip on the phone, getting entangled in a bedsheet, and becoming buried.
Moments later a neighbor was digging him out of the rubble. Schultz was out and standing within four minutes. The neighbor sat him down on one of the house’s beams, but told him, “Don’t look down.”
“Why?” Schultz asked.
“Because your wife is right under you. She’s dead.”
[Why I think this driver did the right thing when faced with an EF-4 tornado]
Shultz survived but his wife Geri, 67, died on that day in April along with her good friend and next-door neighbor, Jacqueline Klosa, 69. A portrait of Clem and Geri was found more than 30 miles away, the Herald reports.
The couple’s dog, a beautiful white shepherd named Missy, went missing as well, and wasn’t found until two days after the storm. Schultz told the Herald that Missy is still skittish, but has remained a loyal companion:
Missy sleeps on the sofa, on an afghan Geri crocheted for her. It was one of the possessions Clem was able to salvage.
“I’ll be watching TV, and something comes on that needs a comment, and she (Geri) is not there,” Clem says. “But Missy’s always there.”
He fingers the cream-colored afghan, choking up.
“This is the last thing she crocheted. It was for Missy.”
After all that he had been through — the loss of his wife and his home, and a compressed broken vertebra that twisted his back “like a question mark” — Schultz wasn’t sure what to do with the video. But, the Herald reports, his daughter showed it to his doctor, and Schultz decided it was time to see what he recorded that day.
[After the storm: Surviving the April 2011 Tuscaloosa tornado disaster]
Schultz shared the video with a graduate student who studies the structure of tornadoes at the University of Wisconsin, and it will be shown at an upcoming atmospheric science meeting in California.
“I’m proud of it,” Schultz told the Herald. “My video is saving lives.”
