‘All hell broke loose’: Residents in shock after tornadoes ravage Portage

PORTAGE, MI — The smell of pine from felled trees lingered in the air Tuesday evening as residents emerged from their homes on Lovers Lane to survey the damage.

Two suspected tornadoes ripped through the Portage area around 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. respectively on Tuesday, May 7. Yards were littered with uprooted trees and downed power lines.

Some residents were happy to have escaped the disaster. Others had just seen everything they owned taken away.

Lynne, who declined to give her last name, was standing outside her front door at Romence Road Parkway and Lovers Lane when the storm hit. She had been following the storms all day.

“I saw how it was really light on one side of the house, but on the other side it was dark,” Lynne said. “All of a sudden it started raining really hard and when I closed the door a tree branch came through. »

The tornado lasted 30 seconds, Lynne said. It looked like a train was passing. The storm left a hole in her porch and caused her toilet to explode, she said.

Two neighboring houses that suffered more direct impacts were unoccupied.

In all directions there was destruction. Power lines dangled like spaghetti noodles.

I felt like I was on a roller coaster

Five miles away, at Pavilion Estates, a mobile home park, trailers were tipped onto other trailers.

Kevin Zabonick was in his mobile home when the storm hit. The walls started to shake. As he entered the bathroom, Zabonick felt the force of the storm pushing him.

“It threw me into the bathtub,” Zabonick said. His dog, Sassy, ​​jumped in with him.

“It felt like someone hit you really hard,” he said. Chrystal Herndon, Zabonick’s wife, said it was like a roller coaster when the house collapsed from the force of the wind.

By the end, the storm had torn off part of the roof and knocked the house off its foundation.

“It’s destroyed,” Zabonick said.

The couple and a crowd of others gathered at a nearby gas station, waiting to be transported to places to spend the night. Tracy Schlotterback was among them. After the storm passed, he threw a mattress on himself, his daughter and his two grandchildren.

“The trailer just shook,” he said.

Then he saw “a lot of destruction” outside and smelled gas, leading to the evacuation of residents of the mobile home park.

Shelters were established in Portage for those displaced by the storm at First Assembly of God, 5550 Oakland Drive, and Radiant Church, 995 Romence Road.

“It was too late to go anywhere”

Jeff Heath, who has lived in his Lovers Lane home for 14 years, was dozing in his living room when the storm arrived.

“I could see it was getting ready to rain. I just thought, ‘There’s no point in getting up for this one,'” Heath said.

But it was not a storm like any other.

“I was actually standing in the middle of the room while everything in the house was swirling. And by then it was too late to go anywhere,” Heath said.

Heath’s front door was blocked by a fallen tree, but he was able to escape through his garage. A sign for Romence Road Parkway was wrapped around the only remaining tree in his yard. The back corner of his barn was gone.

None of Heath’s neighbors were injured by the storm. Michael Scott Beauparland, one of Heath’s neighbors, was almost home from Battle Creek when the suspected tornado approached his car on Lovers Lane.

Rain was falling sideways to his left and debris was hitting his car on his right, Beauparland said. In front of him, Beauparland saw nothing.

“All hell broke loose,” Beauparland said.

Despite a tree falling through the roof of his house, Beauparland was in good spirits. After checking on Heath, Beauparland walked over to his neighbor who couldn’t get out of his house.

“The positive side is we’ve wanted to get rid of these trees for a while,” Beauparland said. “That represents $1,000 in damage, after which it’s insurance.”

Heath has been connected to Portage his entire life, but couldn’t remember anything as severe as Tuesday’s storm since the 1980 tornado that hit downtown Kalamazoo.

“Sure, some trees get cut down from time to time…but I never expected anything like this,” Heath said. “Everything in my garden is uprooted. »

As the sun set over Heath’s property, he pulled out a sleeping bag and looked for gas for his generator.

“I don’t even know where to start, so I guess I won’t,” Heath said. “I really can’t do anything tonight.”

For more on Tuesday’s tornadoes in Portage, Click here.

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