Cleanup is complete
WEST SUNBURY — Twenty-six triaxle trucks full of dirt later and Ellen Pry is done cleaning up after a tornado that struck her neighborhood a week ago Monday night.
A one-time service station, which was in front of her West Sunbury Road house, suffered irreparable structural damage.
The roof flew off. The walls were knocked out. The foundation bricks flew into neighboring yards and trees.
It took a couple days of heavy machinery and a day or two of throwing things away and burning materials. Then, with no plans to rebuild, they filled in the area with fresh dirt.
“It looks huge,” Pry said of the bare spot in her yard, noting that her sons have asked her not to plant trees or flowers in the area because they don’t want to have to mow around anything. “We are going to plant grass seed.”
Pry, 82, has nine sons, two daughters, 36 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren. So the family said it is still finding ways to scour the yard for metal debris that could hurt little feet. Her home suffered only minimal damage.
Across the road, neighbors also still are searching a soybean field for debris. Parts of the neighboring buildings were blown throughout the growing field.
Carla Campbell, who works at Eshenbaugh Insurance, explained soybeans are harvested with equipment that could be damaged if debris got caught up in it. So every now and then some people walk the field looking for materials.
Some neighbors stopped by one day at the insurance agency and helped reset a 900-pound sandstone and brick marquee that advertises Eshenbaugh Insurance. It had been toppled by the wind, but not broken.
According to the National Weather Service, the storm hit about 9:30 p.m. Aug. 10 and carried winds of 60 to 80 mph. The storm was classified an EF0 tornado, which is the lowest on a scale that goes up to 5.
On June 28, an EF0 tornado touched ground in the area of Chaparral Drive in Cranberry Township. No one was hurt then either. Officials reported more than a dozen trees were uprooted in its path.
