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Weeks of Clean Up After Straight Line Winds Strike

Posted at 11:34 AM, Apr 13, 2014
and last updated 2014-04-14 12:12:22-04

jerichoROCKFORD, Mich. (April 13, 2014) — The buzzing of chain saws and neighbors gathered on the corner of Ella Terrace in the River Bluffs Subdivision is not a common Sunday occurrence, although they are a tight-knit community. The reason behind their meeting spot? Many of them had only seen the devastation from straight line winds on television or in the newspaper, but this time, it was right before them.

Saturday, Anna Koning-Ogg and her family had just returned from a Florida Spring Break trip.

“All of a sudden the whole house started shaking, it was dark and the winds kept picking up and we looked and we just saw, all of a sudden the trees just started to fall, cascade like this so we all ran downstairs because we didn’t know if it was a tornado or what was going on.” Anna said, “So we were downstairs for maybe a minute or two, came back up thinking okay everything’s calmed down and we just saw this massive devastation, just all around our house.”

It’s something you really need to see to believe. The trees behind Anna’s house, toppled liked dominoes, bent over in a perfect line, snapped in half and even uprooted. A gigantic street lamp pulled out of the ground, with the massive decorative top across the street, shattered.

“My wife and I were sitting on the back porch looking out at the trees and they started waving quite a bit,” Richard Walker said, “We thought this is pretty cool and then they started waving more than we had ever seen, then a lot of noise started and all of a sudden it sounded like a roar and we said let’s get down in the basement!”

Along with the howling winds, came hail. But the wind proved to have caused the most damage.

“A neighbor was driving on Jericho at the time and a tree fell in front of her, she put it in reverse to go out the back way and a tree fell behind.” Richard added. Sunday morning, that lady’s car was still stuck on Jericho Avenue.

Luckily, no one was injured and Richard believes some minor damage was done to the newly built subdivision. Much of which, has construction under way.

“We’re definitely going to have a full couple of weeks of clean up.”Anna added.