SENECA – Jeff Maierhofer wasn’t home when the tornado struck the family farm, but his wife and children were.
His family, along with seven of his neighbors who live in trailers, huddled together in the basement after reports of threatening weather and a possible tornado were announced the night of June 22 – one year to the day after the Coal City tornado that took over 800 homes.
“Thankfully their trailers were not hit, but we’ve lost two farmsteads, the one we live in and the farm around the corner,” Maierhofer said the next morning.
At least six tornadoes touched down that night in counties in north and central Illinois, causing structural damage near Marseilles, Seneca and Pontiac, according to the National Weather Service.
The first pronounced weather threat of the summer season resulted in a tornado touching down south of Interstate 80 in Marseilles at 8:59 p.m., then in Seneca at 9:10 p.m., according to the weather service.
The tornado in the Marseilles-Seneca area had an Enhanced Fujita rating – which measures the intensity of tornadoes – of EF2, according to NWS. Its path length was about 8 miles, with a width of 300 yards. A tornado in Mazon was rated EF0.
The family farm where Maierhofer lives has been in the family since 1878.
On Tuesday, just under one week after their home was affected, Maierhofer said they are lucky, and that things could have been far worse.
“We still have a place to sleep,” he said. “We’ve had lots of help cleaning up.”
His voice got a bit quieter when he talked about the damage to his neighbors, people who farm the land next to his and live nearby.
He talked about the barn lost at the farmstead of Bill Chapman, the house and outbuilding damage at homes of the Beldon and Ashton family. The barn that had stood at the farmstead of John and Carolyn Kinsella since 1850, that is no longer there.
There is an upside a week later, though. The crops that were laid flat the next morning and seemed like a complete loss have popped back up. While there is debris in the fields, it appears that the income from the crops won’t be lost.
Maierhofer said locals have come out in full force and the family has received visits from the area FFA chapters, football team and cross country team, among others, to help clean up.
But they’ve also had visits from what were once strangers with Operation Rebuild who are now friends.
As they dug through the debris and salvaged what they could, they found an 8-foot-tall cutout of Woody from “Toy Story” who is waving. They’ve set the cutout on the porch to welcome all those who are coming to help.
Emergency management officials for Grundy County said no major damage was reported from the storms, just a home with shingle and porch damage, as well as power lines, crops and trees down.
Published: Thursday, June 30, 2016 5:30 a.m. CDT By HEIDI LITCHFIELD – hlitchfield@shawmedia.com
Photo: (Heidi Litchfield – hlitchfield@shawmedia.com)
