Just before 6 a.m. Wednesday, residents of South Hampton Road in Columbus were startled awake by what they say sounded like a train or a jet passing extremely low over them.
In the next few moments, homes shook, trees toppled, debris flew and the power went out.
When the sun rose, they could fully see what had happened: A tornado had touched down in their East Side neighborhood. The National Weather Service in Wilmington confirmed Wednesday evening that the area had been hit by what at its peak was an EF-1 tornado with a top wind speed of 90 mph.
No injuries were reported, although there were close calls.
The storm knocked out power to more than 2,383 customers in the Columbus area, according to American Electric Power, including Ohio Avenue Elementary School and Eastmoor Academy; classes were canceled at both schools. As of 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, more than 100 customers remained without power, and the utility planned to work through the night to restore power to everyone by Thursday morning.
No tornado-warning sirens were activated because the NWS in Wilmington did not issue a tornado warning. That was because the tornado happened so quickly, its rotation was too low in the sky for NWS Wilmington’s primary radar to detect, and the FAA’s radar at John Glenn Columbus International Airport was malfunctioning at the time, said NWS meteorologist Myron Padgett. He said this confluence of events can happen from time to time.
An NWS storm-damage survey team reported that the tornado is believed to have traveled a 3.75-mile path — 150 yards at its widest. It went from a “weak tornado” in the Olde Towne East neighborhood through Bexley to the streets of the Mayfair neighborhood around the intersection of South James Road and East Broad Street.
That’s where “the most significant tornado damage occurred,” the NWS said, and where wind speeds were believed to have reached 90 mph before the tornado lifted and dissipated.
The heaviest damage appeared to be concentrated in a 20-house stretch of South Hampton Road, between the addresses numbered 90 and 160.
Two houses, at 140 and 148 S. Hampton Road, were heavily damaged by trees that fell on them. The house at 140 S. Hampton was vacant because its owner had died a few months ago, but the five people who shared the house at 148 S. Hampton Road had a harrowing tale of survival.
“We were blessed,” said Casey Wolfe, 23.
Wolfe and her boyfriend, Codey Boyer, 23, were up with their two daughters, Caylee Boyer, 3, and Camreigh Boyer, 1, getting ready to go to work.
Codey Boyer said he carried Caylee outside and struggled to put her in the car in the driveway. He was soaked by a torrential rain and struck in the face with small tree branches and acorns.
“I knew it wasn’t going to be good,” Boyer said. “It was like a jet engine …. (then) everything just fell.”
Two large oak trees in the backyard snapped and crashed into the house, destroying the kitchen area.
Boyer ran into the house and turned on the light on his cellphone. Wolfe, her mother, Mary Redd, and Camreigh were inside screaming. Fortunately, everyone was OK because they were in either the living room or bedroom when the trees fell.
“If we would have been in that kitchen, we would have been under that rubble,” Wolfe said.
Redd, 53, said she is thankful that no one was hurt, but now the family will be scattered — much like tree limbs throughout the East Side neighborhood. She had recently brought Wolfe, Boyer and the two girls into the home she rents.
“The house they knew, they can’t go back to,” Redd said through tears.
Marshall Cobb, 50, who lives next door, said the tree in his front yard fell on his 2011 Chevrolet Malibu, totaling it.
Across the street, Brad Miller, 46, said he was awakened by what sounded “like a train was going through the house.”
“And then it was over as soon as it began,” he said.
When Miller looked outside, he couldn’t see anything. His front door was blocked by a tree limb. He later found that a huge oak tree had snapped, and a tree limb had poked through the roof of his house.
A small trailer that Miller had in his front driveway was picked up and tossed onto the front of his Chevrolet Cavalier.
By mid-afternoon, Miller and some friends already had cut and stacked tree limbs, had removed the trailer from his car, and had a tarp on his roof. But he won’t soon forget the scene he saw several hours earlier.
“It looked like a war zone out here,” he said.
by Jim Woods (2018, September 26 | Updated 2018, September 27) The Columbus Dispatch
