After violent EF-4 tornado, 'little bitty town' was gone
It was mid-Friday afternoon, and Susan Meyer just wanted to go home and check on her chickens.
The Fairdale resident had locked the four of them in their coop as a thunderstorm approached her home Thursday evening. She put away a ladder she didn't want blowing down. She went back inside, where she had been watching “Bones” on a TV on the second story of her home. She was turning off several computers, afraid a power surge would damage them, when she heard a “loud, even sound.”
“It was very unnatural,” Meyer said.
Windows started blowing out and debris hit her as she scrambled down the stairs. At the bottom of the steps, she curled into a ball and waited. A massive tornado had hit.
It was only 30 seconds, she said, but that was enough to severely damage the more than 100-year-old house she has lived in since 1987. Part of the second story collapsed into the first. A north wall blew in.
At least six of her pet birds, including cockatiels and African gray parrots, disappeared. She looked to the east, and her “little bitty town” was missing.
Fairdale, on the south side of Route 72 just west of Kirkland and east of Monroe Center in DeKalb County, was leveled by a tornado National Weather Service experts are estimating as an EF-4, the second most violent tornado rating with winds as high as 200 mph.
The tornado killed two of Meyer's neighbors, Geraldine M. Schultz, 67, and Jacklyn K. Klosa, 69, who was not found until Friday in what remained of her home's second-floor bathroom where she had sought shelter, holding her purse. At least 11 others were taken to hospitals.
The devastation, Meyer said, was horrible. She spoke Friday as she waited to get back into her neighborhood after leaving for the night. Because electrical and propane gas utility workers hadn't deemed the neighborhood safe enough, she couldn't get in to see how the chickens were doing. Or if they were still there.
But she had praise for first responders. Storm chasers following the tornado jumped out of their trucks and immediately began searching the debris for survivors. And within minutes, all manner of firefighters, police and other emergency workers had shown up, she said. “It was surprisingly organized,” the former Carpentersville resident said.
A few miles east of Fairdale, the Kirkland Fire District station was a beehive of volunteer activity Friday. Hundreds of cases of bottled water were piled inside and out; food was being stacked in the garage, over-the-counter medicines in the office; and people were dropping off meals and snacks to feed the residents and volunteers. Helpers sorted it all, including cleaning supplies.
Kirkland firefighters had set up a GoFundMe account online for the donation they said would be especially useful: cash.
Northwest of Rochelle, volunteers from a Dixon-based construction company were helping Diane Dorsey take two large trees off her house on Flagg Road. One of them had fallen across her kitchen. Dorsey has lived there since 2006, on Lady's Manor horse farm, with two horses, seven cats and a dog.
She had heard the storm warnings on television news. Then she looked out at her horses, who she said are good barometers of bad weather approaching because they typically become nervous and seek shelter. “I knew, when they went in the barn.”
“I looked at the golden retriever and said, ‘So, we're going into the bathroom,'” Dorsey said.
On Friday, Dorsey was grateful for the help of a half dozen men from the Bonnell company of Dixon. They just showed up, she said. “If the guys did not stop from Bonnell, I do not know what I would do,” she said.
The horses were unfazed, even though the barn had been turned slightly by the tornado and the barn door was torn off.
Emergency workers weren't immune to Thursday's destruction. Ogle County Sheriff Brian VanVickle lost his house near Rochelle to the tornado.
VanVickle had been told his house was destroyed, but he didn't see it for himself until just before dawn Friday. “We went to work and helped the other people that needed the help. I got there this morning around 5 a.m. to see that my house was gone. This is what I was told and what I expected,” VanVickle said.
Pressed for more comments at a media briefing Friday with Gov. Bruce Rauner in the tiny community of Flagg Center, VanVickle added, “I know it is hard to believe, but I love my job.”
He praised the tightness of the rural community. “We had no requests for housing in Ogle County last night, which is a testament” to how people take care of one another, he said.
The American Red Cross planned to keep a shelter at Rochelle Township High School open Friday night, but workers there didn't expect many people to use it. The displaced are staying with friends and relatives.
Rauner spoke at news conferences in Flagg Center and Fairdale. He also toured areas damaged by the tornado.
“We hope and pray that that is all the fatalities,” Rauner said. “We are very blessed that more people were not hurt. This was a devastating storm.”
The two women killed, Schultz and Klosa, lived close to one another and were friends, Meyer said.
Schultz was known as “Geri” to friends and was kindhearted and gentle, Meyer said. Schultz would drive Klosa to clinics for medical treatment, Meyer said. Klosa was fun-loving and quick-witted, she said.
About 15 to 20 homes were destroyed in Fairdale, according to DeKalb County Sheriff Roger A. Scott. Matthew Knott, division chief for the Rockford Fire Department, told The Associated Press that just about every building in town “sustained damage of some sort.”
Resident Al Zammuto, a 60-year-old machinist waiting at a roadblock Friday to get back into Fairdale, said he and other residents received cellphone alerts about the tornado at 6:45 p.m. Thursday, but he dismissed it as previous warnings hadn't amounted to anything.
Then his windows exploded.
He took cover as the severe weather struck. Bricks were torn off the side of his home. Minutes later he stepped outside and couldn't believe his eyes. He said the town “looked like a landfill” and the sounds were haunting.
“People were screaming and yelling,” he said. “People were in total shock.”
National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Friedlein said tornadoes swept through six north-central Illinois counties and that damage survey teams will visit the area to determine how long they stayed on the ground, how many there were and the extent of the damage.
About 30 homes were damaged or destroyed in Ogle County, west of DeKalb County, VanVickle said, adding no deaths or significant injuries were reported in the county.
Trucker Tod Carlock, 41, of Mount Morris was one of the people who took refuge in a cellar at Grubsteakers restaurant at routes 251 and 64 near Rochelle. He had pulled into the restaurant's lot about 90 minutes earlier to await a tire-repair service, because he had blown a tire. Just as he was ready to leave, he saw the tornado across the road. He threw the truck into reverse, left it in back of the restaurant, and ran to where a man was waving him into the building and down into the cellar.
“We no more than shut the door than it hit. It was just that quick,” Carlock said. They and about 10 others were trapped for about 90 minutes, he said, but were able to call loved ones to let them know they were OK.
It is the third tornado he has been in, he said.
The tornado totaled the truck.
• The Associated Press contributed to this report.