MASCOTTE — Tuscanooga Baptist Church leaders are calling it a miracle.
An apparent tornado ripped through Mascotte early Thursday morning, tearing the roof off of the church’s parsonage, where a beloved retired pastor and his wife were living.
The couple, James and Mary Lou Madison, survived. Now, though they’re rattled, the Madison’s are safe and staying with family in town.
“It was definitely a miracle,” said Casey Ferguson, the church’s lead pastor.
No injuries or deaths have been reported in the wake of the apparent tornado, which caused damage on Tuscanooga and Honeycut Roads and Painted Horse Lane in Mascotte.
Thomas Carpenter, Lake County Emergency Management Director took a helicopter Thursday morning to survey the damage from above. The debris path, he said, was about a mile long and a half mile wide.
“It’s amazing nobody was hurt,” Carpenter said.
Nearby on County Road 469 in Center Hill, Kelly Garrett and her son, Judson Williams, surveyed the damage on their property.
A shed and kennels for hunting dogs were twisted and littered the road. The storm also flipped a pontoon boat upside down and mangled a boat trailer. Siding on their home was peeling and windows were broken. But the whole family, including the dogs, were uninjured.
Despite the serious damage, both Dickerson and Lt. John Herrell, a public information officer with LCSO, said they were thankful there was no loss of life.
The Lake County Sheriff’s office is still urging people to use caution traveling in the area. Tuscanooga Road, where the church is, was closed for a portion of the morning, but has since been reopened.
Eight total structures were damaged, four of them “significantly,” Lake County Fire Chief Jim Dickerson said in a press conference.
The church’s parsonage, an old frame house, was completely destroyed after it was picked up and lifted 20 feet from its foundation. The main building of the church sustained damage to its roof and awnings were ripped from the building. Though there was no interior damage, Ferguson said.
A tree 4 feet in diameter fell in the church’s cemetery, which has been around since the 1880s. Ferguson expects it damaged some of the headstones.
The agencies started receiving reports of strong winds around 6 a.m. Thursday. Severe thunderstorms brought rain and wind through the area, creating ideal conditions for a tornado.
But the National Weather Service hasn’t yet classified it as such. Meteorologists will be on site Friday morning to assess the damage, said Scott Spratt, warning coordination meteorologist.
The NWS has been analyzing radar and coordinating with the county’s emergency management team with photos and videos. But the NWS will need to see the damage and interview locals before they make a decision.
The question is: “Was it damaging straight line wind? Or was there any rotation, a tornado?” Spratt explained.
For the community around Tuscanooga Baptist, the focus is on the future.
“We’re going to rebuild,” said Patrick Gibson, the church’s worship leader. “Everything can be replaced. As long as no lives were taken, it’s just material stuff.”
James was the church’s pastor for 50 years, and he and Mary Lou are still fixtures in the community. Tuscanooga Baptist was founded in the 1860s, and its members are “like family,” Gibson said.
Members, as well as Mascotte residents, came out to clean up Thursday afternoon.
They pulled anything salvageable out of the Madisons’ home and loaded on to trucks. A wooden truss skeleton was all that was left of the roof. Meanwhile, inmate work crews helped clean up the cemetery.
In the hours after the storm, the church has seen a spike in donations on its website, Gibson said.
“The devil wants to take one step forward,” he said. “Lo and behold God wants to take two steps forward.”
And service is on for Sunday, whether the church has power or not.
“If we can’t get into the church, we’ll have it somewhere,” Ferguson said.
by Katie Sartoris (2019, Jan 24) Daily Commercial
