Jeron Prentice didn’t hear sirens, he didn’t get a phone notification, but he knew when the storm hit, he had to hide.
“I didn’t have time to make it to the basement,” Prentice said. “I just made it to the bathroom, and sat in the bathtub, and waited.”
Prentice’s home, which is owned by his aunt Carolyn Lewis, was one home on 21st Avenue in Gary that was hit by a Wednesday night tornado. The home was missing windows and some of its gutters, and early Thursday afternoon, it was still without electricity and gas.
Power lines were also down throughout the street, and some homes were missing roofs. The 21st Avenue stretch between Whitcomb and Hendricks streets was the hardest hit part of Gary, according to a news release from the city.
Kevin Donofrio, a science and operations officer at the National Weather Service in Chicago, said they had two teams out in the field Thursday, one tracking storm damage in northeastern Illinois and the other tracking damage from Monee, Illinois, into Gary.
“We haven’t confirmed any start point or end point yet, but they have seen F1 damage in parts of Gary … it’s focused on a narrow corridor, southwest of downtown,” he said. “It was a very large low-pressure system that moved through, when strong winds happen and there’s a sharp clash with warm moist air and cooler air north of it,” he said.
The teams are trying to determine the start and end points, where peak intensity occurred, and what’s happened in terms of whether that’s a continuous path, or there was a touchdown and it lifted up and another tornado formed.
“Outside of tornado damage, you’ll see straight-line wind damage when it gets up to 70 mph, but there are pockets of higher winds,” Donofrio said.
In a news conference Thursday, Gary Mayor Eddie Melton said residents had said they saw a tornado, but it hadn’t been confirmed by the National Weather Service.
Residents had been displaced, Melton said, but the city saw no serious injuries or deaths.
“Multiple homes and businesses have sustained wind damage and flooding as well as numerous trees and limbs down throughout the city,” Melton said. “We received reports of outages as far east as our Emerson neighborhood and as far west as 21st (Avenue) and Clark Road and the Tolleston neighborhood.”
Affected residents could have short-term shelter at Gary’s Monroe Center, 4101 Washington St. Melton did not say how many residents used the facility Wednesday night.
Throughout the city, wires were down, said Mark Terry, deputy fire chief, but most were seen on the west side. On the city’s primary and secondary searches, all residents were accounted for.
One resident had to be rescued from her home, Terry said, but she was taken to the hospital in stable condition.
Gary had crews out to fix fallen powerlines and trees and other storm damage as soon as they could, Melton said.
Louis Campbell said crews were helping fix his mother’s house, which had window damage and was missing siding. The window damage came from a plank of wood that flew from the neighbor’s house.
“She just finished fixing her home from fire damage,” Campbell said. “It’s so sad.”
Prentice and Lewis said cleanup crews were at their house about an hour after the damage was initially done. Lewis said city crews were helpful and communicative.
Most of the damage to the home was on the front of the house, which Lewis said she thinks was because of the wind. Lewis was not at the house when the storm hit.
“It’s really sad,” she said. “We’re just hoping that we’ll get power and gas soon and everything cleaned up.”
At McCullough Academy, 3757 W. 21st Ave., high winds peeled the roof off the gym. Students were not in the building at the time of the storm.
A couple of classrooms adjacent to the gym also were impacted by the storm, according to Chelsea Whittington, chief of public and community relations for the Gary schools.
“We have not been in the building yet to inspect it,” Whittington said of school officials Thursday afternoon. “The fortunate circumstance is next week is spring break.”
That, she said, will give the district time to get a full assessment of the damage and make plans for where the students will attend classes when vacation is over.
Classes there were canceled for Thursday and Friday, though parent-teacher conferences are going on as scheduled Friday at the Gary Area Career Center, 1800 E. 35th Ave.
At the Hard Rock Casino Northern Indiana, the glass panels of the outer doors at the front entrance were broken during the storm but the damage was minimal and the broken glass was quickly cleaned up by the casino staff, according to a spokesperson. Guests continued to have access to enter and exit the front doors at all times and no one was injured during the storm. The casino also did not lose power during the storm.
As of 1:15 p.m. Thursday, NIPSCO reported 2,462 customers still without power, with all but 13 of them in Gary, according to the utility’s website. That number was down from close to 15,000 Wednesday night, after the peak of the storm.
High winds hit Highland
Damage also was extensive in Highland, where high winds took out large trees.
When Rosie Ramirez takes her final breath, she’s convinced her tombstone will read, “My husband said, ‘I told her,’” for all the times she did something she probably shouldn’t have done.
She and her daughter, Jessica Ramirez, were able to joke after the storm, laying waste to three trees in a row on Forrest Drive. But for a terrifying minute or two, the women weren’t so sure the joke wouldn’t become reality, they told the Post-Tribune Wednesday night.
Rosie Ramirez was heading home to Dyer when she stopped off at Jessica Ramirez’s house on Forrest Drive to drop something off, she said. They were chatting when suddenly, the sky grew dark and the winds kicked up.
Remembering that her daughter, who’d moved into the Forrest Drive house 11 months ago, had already had an issue with a branch coming off the giant tree in their parkway, Rosie Ramirez decided she needed to move her car out of the driveway where she’d parked, she said. But as soon as she backed her black Honda onto the street, the terror started.
“All of a sudden, I feel my car lifting up into the air,” Rosie Ramirez said. “I said to my husband — I have him on the phone — ‘It’s taking me! It’s taking me!’ and then it dropped just as the tree came down in the driveway. I watched it.”
“It went from zero to 100 like that,” Jessica Ramirez said.
Daniel Aguirre, a couple houses up from Ramirez’s and her husband Joshua Berthiaume’s house, was the first house in the line that went down Forrest. They’ve lived there since 2015.
“It started to rain, and I heard these hard drops, so I dragged my family downstairs,” Aguirre said. Then I heard a loud, screeching sound, kind of like a train, coming toward the house.”
Once the rain stopped, Aguirre went upstairs and checked their camera. That’s when he saw the tree in his parkway balancing delicately off his front gutter.
“It’s horrible seeing all these trees down,” Aguirre said. “But my family is fine, so I’m grateful for that. Hopefully, there’s no big damage to the house; I don’t see any water coming in.”
Sheila Courtright, two doors down from the Ramirez-Berthiaumes’, wasn’t as lucky and did hear the water coming into her bedroom. The tree in her parkway was a direct hit to the house she’s lived in for 40 years.
“I was trying to get to the basement – my son Matt was downstairs – when I heard a big noise,” Sheila Courtright said.
“I wanted to see it, so I ran up,” Matt Courtright said.
The tree damaged Sheila Courtright’s room, she said, but the others seemed OK. Matt Courtright said they’d just put a new roof on a year or so ago, so he hoped that would help guard against the elements.
“She’s worried about her roof,” her daughter, Sarah Lewis, said. “She’s coming to stay with me for a while.”
Highland Public Works Director Mark Knesek told the Post-Tribune Thursday that his crews had all the roads passable by 10 p.m. Wednesday and that tree-cutting services were on Forrest clearing the felled trees from the houses. Crews also cleared trees on Saric Drive, Martha Drive and 41st, he said, as well as all the pine trees around the Sharp Police Memorial.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
mwilkins@chicagotribune.com
