Monday about 7pm, my husband walks into the upstairs room where I'm working at
my laptop (administering his mother's computer in Sarasota, FL, from my system in
Northern Virginia) and says: "I think you need to call your Mom". I of course
said, "Did she call?" because I hadn't heard the house phone ring, and
he replied that another tornado had hit South Park Mall in Colonial Heights. He thought it
had happened Sunday, but I brought up a link to the Richmond Times-Dispatch and
realized from reports there that it had happened just three hours before then. The reason
for our concern was that my parent's home is on a rise at the west edge of the
industrial park, less than 2000 feet from the area hit by both Monday's tornado and
the tornado in the 1990s.
Fortunately, my 88-year-old mom was all right, but they had lost power and she was
concerned about whether her backup oxygen supply would last until the power came back on.
She's on Dominion VA Power's priority service restoration list because of her
breathing difficulties, and the power came back on while we were talking on the phone. So
I started reading her news bulletins posted on the Times-Dispatch site. That's when I
learned about the Suffolk tornado, and it was "Momma, don't Ed Glenn (the oldest
of my four brothers) and Shirley live alongside the Elizabeth River near Suffolk?" So
I told my mother I'd call Ed Glenn to make sure they were okay.
So what was my brother doing when the tornado hit Suffolk? He was driving home across the
Monitor-Merrimack bridge which spans the James River between Newport News and Suffolk and
saw the tornado heading straight for his community. Just as it reached his community, it
lifted up, skipped over the community, and came down in the James, sucking up water from
the river. I can imagine his feeling of helplessness watching the tornado, like I felt
as an eyewitness to the American Airlines Boeing jet that struck the Pentagon on 9/11.
The tornado in Colonial Heights was the FOURTH one we know of that has hit that industrial
park area since we moved from Richmond to that home in Colonial Heights in 1957 (of
course, we have no way of knowing whether other tornadoes hit the industrial park during
the many years when it was one vast open piece of farmland). One of two smaller twisters
prior to 1990 took out a palisade fence at the other end of our six house street before
doing minor damage to a business behind us in the industrial park, while a different
storm damaged some rooftop air handling units on SouthPark Mall itself. My mother said the
city (Colonial Heights) sent out an automated telephone emergency warning for residents to
take immediate shelter underground just before the tornado hit on Monday, so the city
seems well aware of the risks.
The Colonial Heights-area storms seem to come along the Appomattox River from the west.
Once past the downtown part of Petersburg, the Appomattox curves north in a distinct
quarter circle before curving east again and merging with the James. The Colonial
Heights/SouthPark industrial park sits right inside that quarter circle, and since that
land is at a lower elevation than the residential part of Colonial Heights, it must offer
little resistance to storms taking a shortcut across it.
It's going to be interesting when the time comes to sell my parents' home--I'd
feel a sense of obligation to at least warn that the area is prone to nasty windstorms.
And if bad weather is forecast, I'd definitely stay away from the SouthPark area until
the storm is past.
Virginia is no stranger to tornadoes--here in Northern Virginia, we've had two major
ones destroy homes adjacent to W.T.Woodson High School in Fairfax County, and the tornado
that tore up Waldorf, Md a few years back and killed several people luckily skipped the
more heavily populated Dale City, Lake Ridge, and Woodbridge areas before crossing the
Potomac River into Maryland.
Robin
----- Original Message ----
From: Alice Warner <embryproject(a)gmail.com>
To: vagen(a)rootsweb.com
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 12:24:40 PM
Subject: [VAGEN] Tornadoes
Any of you hit by the tornadoes? Anyone know what suffered damage?
My newspaper out here in Ohio was pretty confusing about where suffered the
tornado damage.
Alice
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