Two men tell different stories of the same twister that destroyed Fairdale
Nick Davey and Brad Hruza both came face to face with the tornado that decimated the small town of Fairdale Thursday.
Davey, of North Aurora, said he was forced to turn away and hide under an overpass as the large tornado moved east of him. Hruza, a storm chaser from Elburn, said he intentionally drove into the wrath of the twister to shoot a better video.
Ironically, Hruza never did get the video he was hoping for, but Davey accidentally did.
Davey said he was driving south on I-39 with his 17-year-old son, Mitch, when ominous green clouds appeared overhead.
"We were just talking about tornadoes when my son pointed out a green cloud that looked just like a tornado cloud," Davey said.
The cloud was to the right of the roadway, Davey said, so he thought he could drive past it. However, the roadway turned slightly to the right, he said, putting him directly into the path of the twister.
"It was huge," Davey said. "It was so close, and we could see all the debris. I had to turn around."
He did a U-turn on I-39, drove away from the twister, then stopped at the first overpass he came to. He and his son huddled under the bridge on the concrete embankment with other motorists while the tornado passed.
On the video, the black twister moves north, never threatening to turn and come at them.
"I should have turned around sooner," he said. "It was crazy."
Hruza was shooting video of a storm system in Cherry Valley near Rockford when he heard about the tornado on the ground near Fairdale.
He said he turned south on I-39, then turned off on Route 72 to chase the storm into Fairdale.
Hruza never got the video footage he was looking for, however. Instead, he came across devastation.
"I arrived about a minute after the tornado went through town," he said. "There were no emergency crews there yet, and people were just coming out of their homes."
Hruza said he has been chasing tornadoes for 21 years, but was in awe of the destruction this one left behind.
"Chasing was over for me at that point," he said. "I met up with two other storm chasers and the three of us went around looking for survivors."
He said the first house he came to was gone, leaving only a foundation and a basement.
He later tried to assist rescuers to free a woman from a home. She was later pronounced dead.
"There was so much debris that they couldn't get emergency crews there," Hruza said. "I've seen a lot of tornadoes and have seen the damage they leave behind. This one was different, this one seemed personal."
Hruza said 75 to 80 percent of the town was destroyed by the tornado, and that 90 percent of it was damaged.
"I saw 100-year-old trees uprooted, power lines down, the whole area had no electricity," he said. "I would rank this in the top five of the worst damaged areas I have ever seen."
Twenty-four hours later, Hruza remained shaken.
"In this line of work, I usually don't let it personally affect me," he said. "But, because it's such a small town with so few people and so close to home ... it is kind of haunting."