by Meta Machulis

After a long search, Gary Helsing finally found the perfect home: a small 1914 house at 323 W. William St. in Dwight. He bought the home June 4, 2009.

A year and a day later, Helsing spent the night in a lawn chair on his patio after being advised not to enter his tornado-damaged home.

“I have roof damage, rafter damage, kitchen ceiling damage,” Helsing said. “All the siding. The soffits just ripped out of the house. The front porch ripped off the other roof, and the garage door got pierced by two-by-fours. The side walls of the house and garage got two-by-fours stuck in them. And two walls in the basement fell down – two red brick walls just fell down.”

By June 10, he’d been told it was safe to enter the house, which is just east of the Dwight Mobile Home Park. But Helsing was still awaiting a structural engineer’s decision on whether the home could be repaired or needed to be demolished. The tornado had moved the home so much that the porch windows and door stuck closed, and Helsing said that when he took a shower, the water drained toward the wrong end of the bathtub.

“I’m praying and hoping that they can save my little 900-square-foot, one-bedroom house!” he said.

Thanks to e-mail alerts and a weather station mounted near his garage, Helsing learned of the storms in the area quickly. He received a tornado watch alert at 7:36 p.m. June 5 and the first tornado warning alert at 8:47 p.m. His weather station registered the tornado’s impact at 9:18 p.m., showing a 63.8 mph gust of wind just before twister came through and the power went out, he said. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration later used the data from Helsing’s weather station to help calculate statistics about the tornado.

He warned neighbors of the incoming storm before it hit and said a young couple from across the street came over with their baby to utilize his basement when the sirens went off. As they hurried downstairs, Helsing was upstairs, trying to close windows.

“All I could see was this black mass of darkness,” he said. The tornado struck just as he was going downstairs himself.

“We could hear metal and glass and a tremendous amount of noise,” he said. The tornado lifted his roof and slammed it back down atop the walls of his home.

“This house and everything in it just trembled,” Helsing said. “It’s a hard-to-describe feeling.”

Once the tornado had passed, Helsing went to get a flashlight and heard cries of distress from the trailer park.

“I could hear people screaming,” he said. He hurried to help.

On the same block, Helsing’s neighbors had gone through a similar experience. Ben Watson and Bobbie Runyon, who live at 313 W. William along with their two children, had spent the evening grilling out  at  a

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neighbor’s house across the street. After a day of pleasant weather, they were skeptical when they heard a tornado was on its way. But “All of a sudden, the weather changed, real bad,”  Watson said. He took cover in the basement of a neighbor’s house with about 25 other neighbors, as many homes on the block do not have basements.

Runyon had stayed home, believing the storm would blow over. Once she realized how serious it was, there wasn’t time to clear the way to her crawl space.

“I was huddled over in the hallway with both my Chihuahuas,” she said, adding, “I cried like a baby and took a blanket and held onto my dogs for dear life.”

The couple described the sound of the tornado as a jet engine blast. Runyon said she could feel the change in barometric pressure as the storm whipped through.

After the first siren stopped, Runyon joined her neighbors in the basement of the other home. Watson, like Helsing, heard screams for help coming from the trailer park and rushed to assist.

Help Arrives

In the moments after the tornado hit, “People on the street were so great,” Helsing said.

Neighbors hurried to the trailer park, where nearly every mobile home had been destroyed in a matter of seconds. Helsing said a neighbor who is a nurse brought blankets and towels to set up a triage area. “Other neighbors pulled people from under trailers, from out of a van – and of course, the EMTs and 911, they were very fast,” he said. Helsing commended the emergency services for not only their immediate response but also their handling of the situation over the days that followed the tornado touchdown.

“The police department has done a superior job as far as making sure no one loots (and) making sure we were safe that night,” he said. “We should be very proud as a town of our fire and police departments. They really care. They did their job and did it well.”

Helsing said Dwight EMT Dustin Campbell also lives in the neighborhood.

“His house got severely damaged, and he stayed on the job every day and didn’t worry about his house. He was worrying about protecting the town and doing his job,” Helsing said.

Despite high regard for Dwight’s emergency services, Helsing, Watson and Runyon all agreed that their block seemed overlooked on some accounts, as efforts at the west end of Dwight focused on the trailer park.

“The park needed immediate attention. There’s no doubt about it – that’s part of our neighborhood,” Helsing said. “But all the concentration went there; then it went to the other side of town. And there’s homes on this street besides mine that are severely damaged, that no one from the city. . . has come to talk to (the homeowners).”

Watson and Runyon lost several trees to the twister, but in addition, two of their cars were totaled and a third is in the shop for repairs after being damaged by the storm. Their camper was also ruined, and their fence was trashed by the tornado.

Runyon felt the Village of Dwight could have done more to reach out to those in need. While a curfew was in place for many hours of Sunday and Monday, June 6 and 7, residents in the area were told they could not return to their homes if they left; utilities were also out until Monday or Tuesday, leaving many in the neighborhood without Internet or phone service for a time.

“There’s no communication,” Runyon said. “How are we supposed to know what’s going on if they don’t contact the victims?”

Runyon, Watson and Helsing said friendly neighbors became key resources to each other on a tight-knit block. All three repeatedly spoke of the importance of neighbors who used allowed the use of their basements during the storm and helped with cleaning up, sharing food and looking out for each other afterward.

“The people on West William Street always jump in to help one another,” Helsing said.

The Illinois Department of Corrections also sent offenders to help clean up on the block, and IDOT sent trucks to pick up piles of debris. Red Cross volunteers offered resources to the residents of West William Street, including meals served at the nearby VFW.

At the Trailer Park

Helsing observed the community’s helpful spirit at the devastated Dwight Trailer Park, where he saw a group of high school students helping to sort through the mess one day, along with several other groups. Volunteerism at the trailer park was closely monitored to prevent looting; Dwight Police were still on constant guard at the park at press time.

Katherine Grimes, 14, of Dwight, volunteered at the trailer park for about an hour Monday evening, June 7, along with her parents, Don and Lorna, and younger brother Luke, age 10.

“We were pretty much just cleaning people’s stuff they’d want to keep and putting it into boxes and bags,” Katherine said. The items were then loaded onto a truck; it was her understanding that items were then taken to their owners. Some residents were also in the park at the time, sorting through belongings. Katherine said one man was looking for a particular pair of shoes, asking volunteers, “Have you found my shoes yet?”

Katherine said volunteering made her ask herself how she would feel if she were in the place of someone who lost everything to the tornado. But the volunteer experience was a positive one.

“I like helping out people, so it was fun to be needed,” she said.

Dwight Village Administrator Kevin McNamara said June 7 was the first day residents or volunteers were allowed in the trailer park.  They were not given a certain number of days to remove their belongings, he said; when interviewed on Friday, June 11, McNamara said at least one resident was still removing personal items from the scene. Throughout the week, after a family cleared its belongings from a mobile home in the park, that trailer was marked “clear,” he said.

McNamara was not certain of the Dwight Trailer Park’s future as of press time. The property is owned by John Airgood of Gardner.