Union City — Mackenzie Day and her family watched the tornado form over Union Lake, the area that bore the worst of the powerful storm system that swept through southwest Michigan on Friday.
The area of northwest Branch County was not under a warning, so Day’s mother said they didn’t have to seek immediate shelter in the basement. Day and her father went outside their home to see the storm; her mom joined with the dog.
“We look and we can see it forming past our house,” Day said. “We can see it twisting, and the clouds start twisting and going different directions.”
The clouds would eventually form an EF3 tornado that would destroy Day’s family’s home and kill three of her neighbors. It was one of four that touched down in southwest Michigan on Friday, meteorologists have confirmed. They are investigating a possible fourth. The tornado that swept through Union Lake and Union City was the strongest, with winds reaching 160 miles per hour that leveled a neighborhood along the north side of the lake.
In all, four people were killed in the twisters, and there were numerous people injured, including 12 reported in Branch County.
The twisters also wrought incredible destruction to the areas of Union Lake and Union City in Branch County, 120 miles west of Detroit. Dense thickets of trees have been mangled. Pickup trucks are overturned. Some homes are nearly flattened by falling trees; others are gone, destroyed by the disastrous wind.
Mark Ward, who lives on Tuttle Road near the worst of the damage along Union Lake, described the damage to his home from the front yard on Sunday. He stood in front of a fishing boat that had been turned upside down.
The twister lifted his 30-foot camping trailer off its base and carried it a few hundred feet from the trailer’s platform and tires.
Trees are on top of his utility trailers. His barn is off its foundation, cocked in two directions, the cement walls pushed in.
His house is damaged. Broken windows, holes in the siding, a hole in the roof, his railing ripped off parts of the deck.
“My neighbors didn’t do so well,” Ward said. “It’s going to take a long time. They’re saying it could be another three or four days for electricity, even.”
Across the street, Amy Katz’s backyard is strewn with stuff. There’s a recliner, craft supplies and other debris. Much of it isn’t hers.
There are 16 large trees down in Katz’s yard. A neighbor helped cut them up with a chainsaw on Sunday morning.
Her home is standing, but its structural integrity is unclear, Katz said. There are five or six holes in her roof. The winds shoved a 2×4 board into the siding.
Katz was home in the basement during the tornado.
“You could just hear it,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if we’d have an upstairs (when it was over). It felt like we might not have a house.”
Surviving ‘destruction’
When Day and her family saw the tornado forming near Union Lake, they rushed inside to Day’s room, a windowless room in the basement, the safest in their home.
It was clear something was wrong, Day said. Her ears felt weird, like a bubble was forming. She had never felt anything like it. That’s when she knew the tornado would hit.
So did her parents. Day’s mother lay on Day, 18, and her 16-year-old brother, Tyler Adamson. The power cut out. Her father wrestled the mattress off her bed and laid it on top of them.
“Then we just heard it go by,” Day told The Detroit News. “It didn’t sound like a train. It didn’t sound like a whistle. It just sounded like loud wind, thunder, destruction.”
The tornado destroyed Day’s home, she said from the gymnasium of Union City High School, where volunteers are organizing donated goods and serving hot meals.
When they emerged from the basement, the family found the entire roof of their house was gone, she said. Things were everywhere — fallen ceiling tiles and beams, living room furniture cast about.
Adamson, Day’s brother, didn’t realize what he had survived until he saw the wreckage.
“I knew it was happening,” he said. “I knew that I was in danger, but I didn’t think there was any possible chance I could die. I was not in reality. Then, after it happened and I saw our roof was completely gone, the only thing I can describe, the emotion, the word that I can use, is despair.”
The family is staying in a hotel in Coldwater. Day said she still hasn’t digested what they lived through, the fact that their home is unlivable, and their neighbors’ homes were turned into debris.
Three of the family’s neighbors died, Day said. They were friends of the family. They were good people who didn’t deserve to die in a disaster, she said.
Day and Adamson spoke to reporters from the gymnasium at Union High School, where volunteers collected to unload and organize donations, serve hot meals and coordinate cleanup efforts.
Day said that’s why she and her brother were there, too. They might pick up a few items they need, but mostly, they wanted to see what else they could do.
“We wanted to come check up on other people,” she said. “We weren’t the only ones who unfortunately went through this tragic event.”
ckthompson@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: How one Michigan family survived the Union Lake tornado
Reporting by Carol Thompson, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
