‘We’ve been tornado’d’: Burlington pair describe hearing storm overhead, the damage afterward

Greg Kmieciak was about to head back to his Burlington house Monday after waiting out a storm in Monroe Center when his wife, Laurie, called. He could tell something was wrong.

“We’ve been tornado’d,” she said.

“It was unbelievable,” Greg Kmieciak said Tuesday morning as he surveyed the damage to the house the couple have shared for 25 years.

Part of the roof is gone. Most of the 18 or so very mature trees on the property were damaged to the point they’ll have to be removed. A pole barn was damaged, and their camper was knocked off its blocks.

The rear enclosed porch is a shambles, and they can’t get a car out of the garage because the door is broken in half.

“It’s a lot to take in,” he said.

Their house on Plank Road in the far West suburb was one of several affected by two rounds of supercell thunderstorms that produced significant rainfall and at least six tornadoes across portions of Ogle, DeKalb, Kane and Lee counties, according to the National Weather Service.

Scott Lincoln, of the weather service, said that number could still grow as crews are finishing collecting data and checking the area. More heavy storms that could produce another round of tornadoes were expected Tuesday evening.

Lt. Mike Tiedt of the Burlington Fire Protection District said the Kmieciak house was the only call for tornado damage in Burlington to which they responded.

“Given the strength of the storms, it could have been a lot worse,” he said.

Laurie Kmieciak said that after the scare Monday, reality was setting in Tuesday.

“I was actually doing better yesterday,” she said. “Now it’s starting to sink in.”

Kmieciak was home Monday afternoon when she got a call from her son in Sycamore that the tornado sirens were going off around his house. She went out to her porch where it was still pretty calm and grabbed several potted plants to bring inside.

The calm was literally just before the storm.

Suddenly it was a downpour with howling winds.

“I’ve never seen it like that before,” Kmieciak said.

She headed down to the basement, and after a couple of minutes the power went out and she started hearing things blow around.

“Then I heard one big clunk, and I thought, ‘Oh, that doesn’t sound good,’” she said.

After being in the basement for about five minutes, she came back upstairs when she couldn’t hear the wind blowing.

“First thing I saw was daylight,” she said.

A large portion of the roof that covered the front living room had been ripped off, and rain was pouring down into her house.

She and her husband are hoping to live in their camper trailer, once they get it righted, while they figure out their next step.

Kmieciak said a building inspector came by Monday night and said the house may have been racked off its foundation, and they may have to demolish it and start over.

“If we have to rebuild it, we’ll rebuild it,” she said. “What else are we going to do?”