The Storm That Gave No Warning
By Erin McCarthy, The Philadelphia Inquirer | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
Late on the night of
In the
In fact, the only warning
"Gray snow," said Rossi, now 57. It was, she said, as though the house's insulation "was raining down on me."
Cold air blew from a shattered bay window on the opposite wall. The ceiling was caved in. The clean laundry she had neatly folded hours earlier was everywhere.
She didn't know what was happening, only that it was something horrible. Her husband was out of town. She grabbed Jeremy from his crib and banged on the door of her 8-year-old daughter's room; the winds had sucked the door shut.
She was able to get to Katie and her 6-year-old, Mathew. She went to a neighbor's house to call her husband, Dale, and told him to come home right away.
When
"As the sun started to rise, people started to think about what to do next," he recalled.
The Rossi home, just two doors away from the Petersen-Thompson household, was reduced to a shell. It was a year before they could move back.
The
Along with its ferocity, the
The infrequency was one reason the weather service did not have a tornado warning up that night for
For the Rossi family, a crack on the front porch is now the only exterior sign of the horror of that July night, and the chaotic aftermath.
It took weeks for the family to find a temporary home a few miles away. In the interim, the family stayed in one room at the
They could not return to their damaged home and had to buy everything -- clothes, pillows, a car, toys.
Even with a good insurance policy, which paid for the razing and rebuilding of their house, the couple were hurting financially. They had gone more than
The emotional strain was just as difficult to overcome.
"You realize in retrospect you go into a depression," he said. "You spent all that time and money and it's destroyed."
After the tornado, he recalled the incredible sadness of the funeral, and how right before the burial, 11-month-old Mikhela was moved from the coffin of her father to that of her mother.
"That was painful. It wouldn't have been as big a deal before I had kids," Dale said. "It tore your heart out."
Afterward, some survivors built storm shelters in their basement, he said, where they go whenever there's a storm warning.
For
That's the Madeline resting safely today in the Rossis' basement.
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