Jen Bridgman and Leah Flanigan aren’t just friends, they’re also fixer uppers. They recently dug into their toolboxes and worked together on new mailboxes outside their homes on Alcott Road in Concord.
Those toolboxes could come in handy, because Bridgman and Flanigan represent many families that live on a ridge off Lexington Road that are still rebuilding their lives – and their homes – two months after a fast-moving tornado swept through Concord in the early morning hours of Aug. 22.
The friends, who are also next-door neighbors, posed for a picture in front of a large missing section of fence that divides their properties, and the irony is they just finished putting it up 48 hours before the tornado hit.
“I’m talking to a fence company, and I don’t know when they’re coming,” Bridgman said.
On the third floor of Bridgman’s home is a boarded-up window, its glass blown away by the powerful tornado. She said insurance paid for most of the damage to her property, which she said is around $25,000, and she’s hoping everything will be back to normal by this winter.
Next door at Flanigan’s house, a truck hauled away a Dumpster full of debris that represented some of the damage the tornado inflicted on her property.
Flanigan estimates her property suffered $100,000 in damage, and the garage, which was just built in July, took the biggest punch – Flanigan said three huge trees fell on it, and while the outside has been mostly repaired, the inside is still a work in progress.
Flanigan was out of town when the tornado struck – she and her husband Kevin Foley were in Maine, and got a call from Bridgman that the tornado hit their neighborhood.
But Bridgman, her husband Scott, and their children were home, and they all huddled in their basement when the tornado arrived.
“It sounded like a freight train,” Jen Bridgman said.
As the Dumpster full of debris pulled out of Flanigan’s driveway, the friends stood a few feet away, watching, and then Flanigan made a comment that likely summed up the mood of many homeowners on the ridge off Lexington Road.
“The fun never ends,” she said.
By Henry Schwan 10/24/16
Photo by Ben Parker “Work to clear trees/debris from power lines/roads, after #Concord storm. @NWS is sending crews to investigate. #wbz”
