Source: PennLive
SALISBURY TOWNSHIP – It’s a story of neighbors helping neighbors, pitching in to repair each other’s homes after they were damaged by a massive storm Wednesday night.
And the following day, while surveying the aftermath of the tornado that ripped through rural Lancaster County, another story has been revealed.
One about neighbors possibly saving each other’s lives.
“One of the questions we’ve been asked is, ‘since this is an Amish community, how did the Amish get the tornado warnings?'” Lancaster County Emergency Services Director Randall Gockley said at a press conference Thursday. “They said that neighbors took the time to come over and tell them in those minutes prior to the storm hitting.”
That is something very commendable, Gockley added, and it shows just how close this community is.
With some neighborly help and adequate warning time from the National Weather Service, Gockley said, “That’s what saved lives.”
No one was hurt. About 50 homes were seriously to moderately damaged and a one-room schoolhouse was completely destroyed.
It hasn’t yet been determined just how many farm buildings and animals may have been impacted, but officials are estimating the tornado caused more than $8 million in damage to the area in and around White Horse and Gap.
Right before 8 p.m. Wednesday, the tornado struck this rural community, and Gockley, who has worked in emergency management for 28 years, has never seen anything like this.
Not in February, anyway.
This was quite a rare storm, Barbara Watson, meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service at State College, agreed.
“It’s very unusual to see a tornado like this in February in Pennsylvania,” she said.
She surveyed the damage by helicopter while two counterparts looked around on the ground, assessing the damage.
“One of the real telling signs is that there’s very concentrated damage on a long path,” she said.
That path ran about 5 to 6 miles. It was narrow, too — about a quarter-mile wide.
Farms and trees on either side were untouched, but running right down the middle was a swath of smashed barns, damaged homes, roofs ripped right off of structures and collapsed outbuildings.
And the debris from all that destruction was carried some distance along that path, in circular motions, she added, clearly showing the telltale signs of a tornado.
The severeity of the tornado has been rated EF2 with windspeed reaching 120 to 125 mph.
While she was in the air, it was the crews on the ground who helped come up with the rating as they talked to witnesses to get first hand accounts and saw the damage up close.
Categories: America, Disaster, Humanity First, The Muslim Times, USA