COMMODORE — “If it had come down through the middle of town, it could have been worse.”
So Commodore Volunteer Fire Department Chief Mark J. Riva described the Sunday evening tornado that sheared trees on the hillside near his home, and took a 200-pound kennel off the family’s pet dog.
“Where’s Max?” Riva’s older daughter Brianna asked. A security video showed the roof and the fence around the kennel blow away — and Max “got rolled over, too,” Riva said. The dog was not hurt, and no other injuries were reported in the Green Township area.
The National Weather Service office in Pittsburgh said Wednesday that it was an EF-1 tornado with estimated maximum winds of 105 mph that touched down shortly after 8 p.m. along Route 286.
“You could hear the whistle,” Riva recalled. “I was under a pretty sizable porch, but the rain was blowing sideways, visibility is down to 30 feet.” And it then dropped to three feet as he, his wife and two daughters went into their basement.
It sheared trees and strew garbage and lawn furniture on a quick trip — so limited that the nearby Indiana County Jimmy Stewart Airport only recorded gusts of up to 20 mph Sunday night.
Weather officials confirmed that Indiana County had its fourth tornado in less than a month and only the 20th since record-keeping began in 1881.
Emergency responders apparently answered only one call for help related to Sunday’s twister, according to the Indiana County Emergency Management Agency: Commodore volunteers responded to a report of trees and wires down on Vanderbilt Street at 8:27 p.m.
“We responded to numerous trees down in about a one-half-mile section of Vanderbilt Street,” First Assistant Fire Chief James Hopkins III told the Gazette. “There were at least six trees down blocking the roadway, with numerous other trees down in the area of the RJ Corman rail line, as well as REA utility lines.”
Riva said power was out for eight to 10 hours late Sunday and early Monday.
Hopkins said the fire department reported its assessment of the damage to the Pittsburgh office of the National Weather Service on Tuesday. NWS officials responded to the area Wednesday.
“I can’t say we initially thought tornado, but we could tell it wasn’t just another wind storm,” Hopkins said. “It was the worst small-area damage I have seen since the tornado in the East Run area 10 or 12 years ago.”
Until two tornadoes touched down in Center and Burrell townships on May 25 — Saturday of Memorial Day weekend — Indiana County’s last confirmed tornado was recorded in 2002, according to the NWS.
The third of the past month was confirmed May 28 in Cherryhill Township.
And the weather service said earlier that an EF-1 tornado with winds of up to 105 mph occurred Sunday in Butler and Armstrong counties near and within the city of Parker.
According to Pittsburgh’s KDKA-TV, strong winds uprooted trees and knocked down power lines, ripped off the roof of a home built in 1824 and knocked down an emergency services communication tower in Butler County.
by The Indiana Gazette (2019, June 20)
