Tornado topples trees: Couple thought their house was going to blow away

Article and Photos by Karen Carr Keefe

Senior Contributing Writer

“I was standing in the kitchen, and all of a sudden, the whole house started to vibrate! … I thought I was going to blow away with the house.”

At that point, Josie Young said, “I thought I was done.”

Luckily, the Sept. 9 tornado that barreled by her home on Second Street didn’t harm the house or the people in it. Josie and Jack Young came through unscathed.

Their trees didn’t.

The tornado decimated five trees on their property – and gave Josie quite a scare.

The Youngs’ place was one of several Grand Island homes in the path of a storm that blew in from Canada in the late afternoon.

The National Weather Service Storm Survey team confirmed “an EF-0 tornadic waterspout came on land near West River Road and Third Avenue on west Grand Island at 4:33 p.m. Monday early evening. Maximum winds were 85 mph, the width was 75 yards and the track length was 1.2 miles.”

The tornado traveled southeast, “with the most significant damage being a couple of uprooted softwood trees along First Street and Second Avenue,” the NWS Storm Survey team confirmed. It lasted about 3 minutes.

That was more than enough for the Youngs.

“It was like it was aiming right at my house. I started screaming, ’cause I got scared. And then, all of a sudden, it stopped,” Josie Young said.

“I looked out the back window, the wind was blowing, crazy, and everything. I never expected to see what I did when I came out,” Jack Young said. “I figured, this neighborhood is gone. I come out, and the only place (that was hard hit) was here.”

When Josie looked outside, she saw that trees were knocked down in front of their house. One big one fell across her circular driveway. But the one that really got to her was losing the apple tree that deer used to feed from when she visited her grandmother at that same house when she was a child.

“I’ve got to get these trees off my lot,” she worried. More worrisome, she said, is that their insurance won’t cover tree removal. “They said they can’t do anything with the trees because the trees are not the house.”

Companies she has called “want a lot of money,” to do it – more than the couple can afford.

“I called the town. The town said they can’t do it, because it’s not on their property; it’s on my property.”

“So, I’ve been in a big mess. At least the house didn’t blow away,” Josie said.

Her husband was surprised at how brief the whole episode was.

 He said, “It seemed like it was there … and gone. The sun came out.”

“It was a little on the freakish side,” Jack Young observed.

Josie and Jack Young stand in front of the apple tree that was downed by the Sept. 9 tornado that swept by their home on Second Street near West River. The Youngs lost five trees to the tornado.