The meatballs in tomato sauce sat untouched in a frying pan on the stove Thursday morning.
Such was the haste with which Kathy Collins fled her kitchen the night before to dash into the basement.
“We turned off the gas, made it onto the staircase and then things just started collapsing,” said Collins, 60.
Chainsaws buzzed and wood chippers growled up and down Collins’ street Thursday in west suburban Countryside. A blue tarp stretched across Collins’ roof where the chimney had collapsed Wednesday evening, shortly after the lash of rain and the wail of the sirens began.
A suspected tornado touched down in Burr Ridge, churning from west to east across Indian Head Park, Countryside and Hodgkins, said Karl Argast, chief of the Pleasantview Fire District. Fire crews responded to 47 calls in the first hour after the twister struck, but there were no known injuries, Argast said.
“Unbelievably amazing — a blessing, with the amount of damage,” Argast said.
Argast echoed a common refrain when he said he’d never seen wind like the kind that tore through his district.
The National Weather Service confirmed early Thursday afternoon that an EF1 tornado — with EF0 being the least powerful on a scale from zero to five — had touched down near Elgin on Wednesday, as well as the one in the west suburbs, although it hadn’t yet been rated. A team of meteorologists was near O’Hare Airport on Thursday checking on damage from a suspected twister there.
A tornado split in half a tree in the 6900 block of Willow Springs Road in Countryside.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Marion Novak, 77, stood in her Countryside front yard Thursday, waiting to hear from her insurance agent. Shards of roof rafters jutted from her front lawn like spears. Her garage door was found high in a tree two lots down from her home.
“In 77 years, other than people I’ve known who’ve been sick, this is the worst thing that has ever happened,” Novak said.
She was sitting down to watch the TV show Jeopardy when the wind began to blow. Everything went dark. She cursed.
“I stepped back and then I heard everything fall,” she said.
She was lucky. She was in the back of her house. The storm ripped off a part of the roof above her dining room in the front of the house, leaving her ceiling fan dangling on a cord from the bare ceiling joists.
“It wasn’t my time,” she said, before taking a call from the insurance company.
Collins was counting her blessings too, even though the storm tore down a dozen trees in her backyard and collapsed her chimney.
“I’ve always been told by my dad: Own a house with a basement,” she said. “I’m so blessed that nobody is hurt. The Almighty Father has got my back.”
A tornado caused a chimney to collapse Wednesday night in the 6900 block of Willow Springs Road in Countryside.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
The National Weather Service hasn’t yet rated a tornado that hit several western suburbs Wednesday night.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Hilary Timpe watches as workers remove a tree that fell outside her home in the 10000 block of Hillsdale Road in Countryside.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
A utility pole was knocked over in the 10000 block of Hillsdale Road in Countryside on Wednesday.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
An American flag is seen among the branches of a tree that fell on a house in the 10000 block of Hillsdale Road in Countryside.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
A tornado damaged homes and made a mess of yards from Burr Ridge to Hodgkins on Wednesday.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
A workers chips away at a tree that fell on a house in the 10000 block of Hillsdale Road in Countryside.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Downed trees were a familiar sight Thursday in the western suburbs.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times