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Tornado wrecked rural Aurora house, but spared family
By Mark Coddington
mark.coddington@theindependent.com
AURORA -- Jeff Juzyk never heard the proverbial freight train as he huddled in his basement Wednesday night with his wife, Stacie, and their four young children.
But by the time the tornado had passed, he knew.
"We knew the house was toast by the time we left our spot down there," Juzyk said. "We knew the house was gone and everything was totaled."
The sight of Juzyk's house west of Aurora on Thursday morning was a sad confirmation of his hunch.
Gone was the house's roof, its pieces piled together on the lawn.
Gone, too, was the entire east wall, leaving two stories of furnishings lying out in the sun -- a bathtub, a couple of mattresses, a television set, a light fixture dangling over the edge of the house.
The house the Juzyks had rented for four and a half years was destroyed on Wednesday by a quarter-mile-wide tornado that also ripped off chunks of the roof of the P&G Pet Care plant a mile down Highway 34.
But while it was easy to see the damage that had been done, all Juzyk saw was how close he came to losing more.
When he looked at the bedroom on the house's second floor, he thought of what might have happened if he and Stacie hadn't had a minute or two to grab their four sleeping children and race to the basement.
"If the girls were in their beds, they'd probably be in a pile of rubble next to the house," he said.
Juzyk only realized the tornado was coming after the power went out at about 9 p.m. When he looked outside, he saw storm chasers park outside his house, then a low, ominous cloud to his west.
Just two minutes or so after the family fled to the basement, the tornado hit.
Their two outbuildings, including a 100-year-old red barn, were destroyed. So was the family's GMC Yukon.
But they still had nearly all the equipment and files for Juzyk's construction business, and no one in the family had a scratch.
On Thursday, Juzyk was able to work, and he had a healthy family. That was more than enough.
"Nothing that we lost was not replaceable," he said. "That (my family is) safe, that's the most important thing to me. The stuff is all fixable."
With several family members in Aurora, the family will have no problem finding a temporary place to stay.
The Juzyks were also surrounded by dozens of neighbors and friends from their Aurora church, who had formed a massive impromptu cleanup effort on Thursday.
Juzyk said he was overwhelmed by the support he had gotten. Randy Kembel of Aurora, a friend of the family, marveled at how quickly the aid had assembled.
"It's amazing how many people have come together," Kembel said. "People knew that Jeff and Stacie got hit by a tornado, and they automatically showed up."
Just west of the Juzyks at the P&G Pet Care plant, commonly known as the Iams plant, damage was not as bad as officials had feared.
A large section of the roof over the plant's east warehouse was torn off, and a strip of the warehouse's wall was blown off as well, leaving some of the products there open to the elements.
"I think your mind always assumes the worst until you can see it," said Kathy Brown, the plant's manager. "But this is the best of the worst, so it couldn't have been any better."
Brown said Thursday morning that teams were assessing damage to the company's products, which appeared to be relatively minimal. Crews were also working to cover the warehouse in anticipation of rain Thursday night.
Power was restored to the plant shortly after 10 a.m., and Brown said she expected distribution to resume late Thursday afternoon and production to resume late Thursday evening or early Friday morning.
She said the warehouse that was hit is used for customization and contains fewer finished products than the distribution warehouse to the west.
About 50 of the plant's 220 employees were there during Wednesday night's storm, and all were evacuated into two concrete storm shelters.
"We had everybody in shelters long before the tornado hit," Brown said. "Everybody came out of it fine. We didn't have a scratch."
LeAnne Doose, a spokeswoman for Southern Power District, said crews were expected to have power restored to all but about 10 Hamilton County customers by Thursday night.
Rerouting work was being done Thursday by Southern crews from Central City and Grand Island, and Doose expected work cleaning up downed poles and lines to continue for about another week.
Hamilton County Emergency Manager Kirt Smith said the cleanup effort was also progressing well at several other homes west of Aurora that received minor damage, along with several farms and the Koch Nitrogen Co. anhydrous ammonia plant.
He said the damage was about in line with what he had heard in reports Wednesday night.
"I feel very fortunate that nobody was injured, nobody was hurt at all," Smith said. "And that's the main thing."
But by the time the tornado had passed, he knew.
"We knew the house was toast by the time we left our spot down there," Juzyk said. "We knew the house was gone and everything was totaled."
The sight of Juzyk's house west of Aurora on Thursday morning was a sad confirmation of his hunch.
Gone was the house's roof, its pieces piled together on the lawn.
Gone, too, was the entire east wall, leaving two stories of furnishings lying out in the sun -- a bathtub, a couple of mattresses, a television set, a light fixture dangling over the edge of the house.
The house the Juzyks had rented for four and a half years was destroyed on Wednesday by a quarter-mile-wide tornado that also ripped off chunks of the roof of the P&G Pet Care plant a mile down Highway 34.
But while it was easy to see the damage that had been done, all Juzyk saw was how close he came to losing more.
When he looked at the bedroom on the house's second floor, he thought of what might have happened if he and Stacie hadn't had a minute or two to grab their four sleeping children and race to the basement.
"If the girls were in their beds, they'd probably be in a pile of rubble next to the house," he said.
Juzyk only realized the tornado was coming after the power went out at about 9 p.m. When he looked outside, he saw storm chasers park outside his house, then a low, ominous cloud to his west.
Just two minutes or so after the family fled to the basement, the tornado hit.
Their two outbuildings, including a 100-year-old red barn, were destroyed. So was the family's GMC Yukon.
But they still had nearly all the equipment and files for Juzyk's construction business, and no one in the family had a scratch.
On Thursday, Juzyk was able to work, and he had a healthy family. That was more than enough.
"Nothing that we lost was not replaceable," he said. "That (my family is) safe, that's the most important thing to me. The stuff is all fixable."
With several family members in Aurora, the family will have no problem finding a temporary place to stay.
The Juzyks were also surrounded by dozens of neighbors and friends from their Aurora church, who had formed a massive impromptu cleanup effort on Thursday.
Juzyk said he was overwhelmed by the support he had gotten. Randy Kembel of Aurora, a friend of the family, marveled at how quickly the aid had assembled.
"It's amazing how many people have come together," Kembel said. "People knew that Jeff and Stacie got hit by a tornado, and they automatically showed up."
Just west of the Juzyks at the P&G Pet Care plant, commonly known as the Iams plant, damage was not as bad as officials had feared.
A large section of the roof over the plant's east warehouse was torn off, and a strip of the warehouse's wall was blown off as well, leaving some of the products there open to the elements.
"I think your mind always assumes the worst until you can see it," said Kathy Brown, the plant's manager. "But this is the best of the worst, so it couldn't have been any better."
Brown said Thursday morning that teams were assessing damage to the company's products, which appeared to be relatively minimal. Crews were also working to cover the warehouse in anticipation of rain Thursday night.
Power was restored to the plant shortly after 10 a.m., and Brown said she expected distribution to resume late Thursday afternoon and production to resume late Thursday evening or early Friday morning.
She said the warehouse that was hit is used for customization and contains fewer finished products than the distribution warehouse to the west.
About 50 of the plant's 220 employees were there during Wednesday night's storm, and all were evacuated into two concrete storm shelters.
"We had everybody in shelters long before the tornado hit," Brown said. "Everybody came out of it fine. We didn't have a scratch."
LeAnne Doose, a spokeswoman for Southern Power District, said crews were expected to have power restored to all but about 10 Hamilton County customers by Thursday night.
Rerouting work was being done Thursday by Southern crews from Central City and Grand Island, and Doose expected work cleaning up downed poles and lines to continue for about another week.
Hamilton County Emergency Manager Kirt Smith said the cleanup effort was also progressing well at several other homes west of Aurora that received minor damage, along with several farms and the Koch Nitrogen Co. anhydrous ammonia plant.
He said the damage was about in line with what he had heard in reports Wednesday night.
"I feel very fortunate that nobody was injured, nobody was hurt at all," Smith said. "And that's the main thing."
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