PLYMOUTH TOWNSHIP, Ohio — The damage to the Beverage home in Plymouth Township is extensive; with a giant hole in the roof, the family is unable to live here now.
The tornado that touched down there Thursday night was so strong it flipped over Jenny Beverage's car, destroyed a camper, a barn and an outbuilding and twisted and toppled trees.
"Still in shock. It was definitely an eye-opener when I first seen it after daylight,” Beverage said.
She said when she got a tornado text alert, she huddled in the basement with her two daughters, "trying to keep calm a little bit, but I prayed the entire time. I prayed that we would make it through."
"We was only down there for five minutes and our ears started popping, and we could hear things start to come crashing down,” Beverage said.
The EF-2 tornado reached speeds of 120 mph, had a maximum width of 250 yards, and had about a 10-mile path-- according to the National Weather Service.
Some volunteer firefighters could see the tornado coming — only during the lightning strikes.
"Just a little of the sky, you could see the funnel cloud itself,” said Captain Craig Wenninger with the Tiro-Auburn Fire Department. Asked to describe what he was seeing, he paused for a moment and gave a one-word response: “hell.”
Three homes, all on West Road, had tornado damage, but emergency officials said things could have been so much worse, with metal and wood debris launching into the air and, in some cases, landing hundreds of yards away.
“A lot of, I think, the individuals were a little shaken, but no injuries reported to us of any concerns,” said a Richland County EMA official.
Beverage is not only grateful her family is OK, but her animals — goat and steer — also survived the terrifying tornado.
"It's a big shock of what happened, but we're all thankful to be alive today,” she said.
Beverage isn't sure how long the clean-up will take following Mother Nature's wrath, but she's grateful for an outpouring of support in Richland County.
“We got people helping us out. We've had a lot of people offer to help us, bring us food, places to stay and all that,” Beverage said. "We're so grateful to everybody."
