Sheltering during storm: ‘We could hear things cracking above’

Rob Gunderson knew something was happening outside after he and his family retreated to the basement of their home on N. Fork Creek Road, Shannon, a few miles west of Forreston on Friday night.

“We went to the basement when we heard the storm warnings. It was weird, we could hear things cracking above, but we didn’t know what,” he said on Saturday.

The 45-year-old dairy farmer took a short break on Saturday afternoon as he and his three kids — along with friends — worked to salvage big bales of hay from one of his sheds leveled by Friday night’s storm.

“We lost two buildings, but no lives were lost so that was a blessing,” he said.

His dairy herd of 240 cows were not injured, but two storage sheds on the family farm were leveled. The home lost some shingles, but remained intact.

“We were upstairs in the house when my mom called and said ‘You’d better get in the basement.’ We really didn’t hear anything. Then one of the firefighters came to the door and wanted to know if we were OK, and I said, ‘Yes, why?’ And he said, ‘Your shed is gone.’ He’s a friend of mine and at first I thought he was just messing with me. Then I looked out and saw: the shed was gone.”

—  Amanda Gempeler, on riding out the storm

Gunderson and a friend worked adeptly with their skid steers moving building debris off the stacked bales of hay and then transferring them nearby to a lot were some of the cows watched while munching on their lunch.

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Jim Ludwig of Lanark points to the 125-foot grain bins that were damaged during Friday's storm along Illinois 64 about 5 miles east of Lanark. (Earleen Hinton/Shaw Media)

Gunderson said friends had quickly come to help with clean up.

“That’s another blessing too. You find out how many friends you really have when they just start showing up,” he said. “And we never lost electricity and that was important too.”

His children Ella, Owen and Ethan stood by in the cold, strong north wind helping when they could by grabbing smaller pieces of the shed’s wood frame and snarled sheet metal roof and carrying them to nearby piles.

“It’s surprising that everything that had living things in it didn’t get damaged,” said Colson Lamb, 12, who was also helping.

Just to the west, along Illinois 72, Amanda Gempeler, 41 and her daughter, Avery, 12, also rode out the storm after Amanda’s mom called her to warn her that a tornado had been spotted nearby.

“We were upstairs in the house when my mom called and said ‘You’d better get in the basement,’” Amanda said. “We really didn’t hear anything. Then one of the firefighters came to the door and wanted to know if we were OK, and I said, ‘Yes, why?’ And he said, ‘Your shed is gone.’ He’s a friend of mine, and, at first, I thought he was just messing with me. Then I looked out and saw: the shed was gone.”

The roof of the large metal machine shed was blown several yards to the northeast, landing just a few feet from Illinois 72. The Gempeler’s semi-truck and trailer was still sitting in the shed inside the flattened walls along with several other items. The family’s home and garage had what appeared to be light damage.

“My phone notification didn’t come on until everything was over,” Amanda said. “My mom lives in Freeport and has cable TV so she thought she’d better call us. We are a little shaken up, but we’re good.”

To the southeast, five miles east of Lanark at 30369 Illinois 64, Jim Ludwig, 70, of Ludwig Family Farms, could see the storm’s aftermath in every direction he looked.

“We have a tremendous amount of damage,” he said. “I think everything is damaged except for the house. Somehow that was spared.”

“Everything” included several large metal machine sheds and 125-foot galvanized grain bins, with one of towers squished in an upright position between the others.

“We have 500,000 bushels of grain (corn) stored in there,” he said pointing to the grain bins. “You can see damage on each of them. Every bit is ruined. I don’t know about the corn yet.”

Portions of the home across Illinois 64 were tossed into the large machine shed busting out windows and covering trucks and semi-tractors with debris and broken glass.

Ludwig lives a few miles away from the main farm, but Jan Sukut, 70, was in the Ludwig family home when the storm hit around 7 p.m.

“I knew it was coming and I was looking out the front window and the first thing I saw were big pine trees coming across the road. I wasn’t scared. I had been in a tornado once before in Missouri,” she said.

Sukut called 911. “The police and fire trucks were here within seconds,” she said.

Ludwig noted that American flag standing on a large pole to the side of one of the large machine sheds was untouched as pieces of the home and garage located across Illinois 64 lay on the side of the building.

“The flag made it through and the home I grew up in was spared, but all the trees around it are gone,” Ludwig said. “I will need to replace 8 overhead garage doors. Everything has damage, especially the grain sets up. One of the buildings, is only 6 months old and we have all our spring tillage equipment in there.”