They were in cars, homes and Acme. Residents describe Thursday tornado in Delaware

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated with the National Weather Service’s preliminary report released Saturday.

Julie Hendrix had errands to run Thursday evening.

She had taken her dog to the vet and needed specific grocery items. Initially, she planned to head to Wegmans but instead decided to pop into the Acme Markets on Kirkwood Highway near her Limestone Acres neighborhood.

Thinking little of the weather, she left her pup in the car.

As she neared the end of her shopping trip, she headed to the back of the store to record one more thing. That’s when Mother Nature temporarily upended her tasks.

An EF1 tornado, spawned by the remnants of Hurricane Debby, touched down in Marshallton at 7:11 pm, the National Weather Service said Saturday. It first hit south of Acme, then continued north for 1.13 miles, the weather service said in its preliminary report. The estimated peak winds were 95 mph.

It’s the first tornado to touch Delaware this year. While no injuries were reported, buildings and homes suffered damage.

“It sounded like a truck hit the front of the building,” Hendrix said, recounting that ceiling tiles began falling inside the store as the twister came through.

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She quickly thought of her dog, who was in her car.

“I ran out to the parking lot to see if he was OK,” she said. “He was sitting in the car like nothing happened.”

Hendrix said she’s experienced a tornado somewhat close-up in the past and her work in health care has taught her to calmly look at what’s going on and not panic. Several other nearby residents echoed her Friday morning.

‘I’m not afraid of a little bit of wind’

Just up the street from the Acme, at Hammond Place and Farrand Drive, Edward Gardner stood outside and watched as the twister came through. The storm knocked down two trees but did not damage his house.

“I was outside looking,” 65-year-old Gardner said. “I’m not afraid of a little bit of wind, but I didn’t realize that it was actually a tornado. “I just thought it was the wind blowing.”

His neighbor, Charles McKiernan, said the tornado sounded like a train. A tree next to his house was knocked over and some overhead wires were downed, but his house was not damaged. His power was also out overnight but was turned on around 5 am Friday.

“I can’t say that I was really afraid because I didn’t know what was going on at the time,” McKiernan said. “I just heard all this racket, and then it’s like all hell broke loose outside.”

Both McKiernan and Gardner and the people they were with were uninjured. Crews were in the process of cleaning up their properties as of Friday morning.

‘A little bit of craziness’

About a half-mile north, the backyards of homes between Sherwood and West Robino drives were littered with downed trees, wires and pieces of backyard decorations Friday morning. Most houses had woodchippers outside their driveways.

For Philip Braselton, a tornado is nothing he hasn’t experienced before. He moved to Delaware from Kansas over a decade ago. He knew what to do to protect his family from him as one ripped through his backyard from him. When the warning came through his phone around 7 pm, he told his wife, Mandy, and his children to go into a closet under a stairwell.

Braselton said he heard the trees snap around the house. After the storm had passed, his kids watched as trees continued to fall.

“I heard a big, huge stud, and I knew immediately,” Braselton said. “I was like, ‘We lost a tree.’”

More than eight trees were knocked over on their property, along with wires and toys from their backyard.

“The fact that no branches came in and did damage, it’s really just a miracle,” Mandy said.

John Solomon’s parents’ house was among the worst of the damage in the neighborhood. A tree landed on the home and their back porch. In addition, all of the cars parked on the property were flattened by fallen trees.

Solomon said he was in the house with his parents when the lights went out and he saw trees “flying.” Once he saw glass began to break on their back porch, Solomon said it was time to go to the basement.

“And, you know, a little bit of craziness, and then it calmed down,” he said. “We started looking out and seeing what was going on, and it was quite the storm.”

A mother’s warning to her children

Megan O’Donnell Clements was far from the tornado on Thursday evening, busy safeguarding her family’s boat in Perryville, Maryland, during the storm.

Then her phone rang.

It was 7:10 pm, and Clements’ twin teen daughters called from the car. Both work at the same restaurant, Cafe Napoli in Kirkwood Plaza.

It was getting a bit windy, they told their mother as they began to head home from work. One sister thought she saw the clouds beginning to swirl and gather, the pair later told their mom. The other thought it must just be heavy wind, a trick of the light.

Get home fastClements told her daughters. Get home safe.

The next time the girls called Clements, they were in tears. Less than a minute after the call, as they drove down Farrand Drive toward home, a tree branch snapped in the wind and hit the hood of their car, snapping a power line along the way.

Shaken, they’d turned the car around to go back to their work. That’s when they saw a chunk of the roof come off the Acme. Clements told them to get inside the restaurant for safety.

But they stayed frozen to their seats in the car as the tornado touched down − right where they would have been driving if they’d kept heading home, Clements said. The tornado then came raging across the Kirkwood Plaza parking lot where the teens sat in the car.

Fortunately, the twister passed just to the east. Her daughters were safe. Their grandfather, who ate at Cafe Napoli that night, was also safe.

‘A sweet moment’ as community rallies

Moments after the brief but intense storm, neighbors in Milltown checked on each other’s health in the drenching rain before even assessing their own damage.

Dawn Warrick, who lives near the Solomon house, said she alerted one of the owners to a downed tree. Soon after, neighbors quickly got to work calling tree service crews.

“We got inside and just started with the major cleanup… and made sure that the neighbors were OK,” she said. “But it was crazy. Unbelievable. And all in the span of like, not even five minutes.”

Mandy Braselton, too, said the community came together. She met some of her neighbors for the first time while checking on their well-being.

Residents returned blown debris back to the houses where they came. And while the damage is hard financially, everyone has been helping each other.

“It really was a sweet moment,” she said. “The first thing they did was check on each other and like, ‘Are you OK? Are you OK?’ “It wasn’t even about the house damage or anything like that.”

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Delaware tornado’s Thursday leaves residents with clean up, stories