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Signs of tornado multiply
Mess left in wild storm's wake will take time to clean upDate published: 5/10/2004 By MICHAEL ZITZ Anecdotal evidence continued to suggest yesterday that a tornado touched down in several places along the Stafford County-King George County line Friday night. "Either that, or a microburst," said Chuck Thompson, Stafford County director of fire, rescue and emergency services. "Those are the only two things that do that. There are trees sheered off 10 feet from the ground for hundreds of yards." National Weather Service officials said they will visit the area today to see if the pattern of destruction matches that of a tornado. Dottie Truslow and nine friends took shelter in the concrete-block Belle Plains Boat Club in White Oak when the storm began at 7:30 Friday night. They saw a greenish cloud approaching, she said. The wind was so strong that pieces of leaves were forced through the cracks of windows in the building. Quickly, there was 2 inches of standing water inside the clubhouse. Within moments, hailstones wore the paint off the door-frame of the building. Truslow said the storm left tree trunks and severed limbs twisted. She said no one was hurt, but so many trees were downed, it took four hours for them to travel the short distance from Belle Plains to State Route 218. "We assume it was a tornado," said Diane Newton of the eastern Stafford community. "It sounded like a freight train. It took our storm windows out, and there are trees down all over the place." Newton said her neighbors have so many trees down in the woods around their homes that "We don't know when they'll be able to get out. There's tree after tree after tree after tree on driveways and roads, and they're big trees." Winds were so high that a chocolate Labrador retriever belonging to a Belle Plains resident was drowned in a ditch by speeding water. "We're directly across from the Crow's Nest [peninsula], and you can see all the trees ripped down on the shoreline," Newton said. "It was much worse than [Hurricane] Isabel." Thompson emphasized that the worst destruction was confined to a few small areas, unlike Isabel. "Isabel was much bigger, but they took a beating down there," he said of Friday's storm. "On an individual basis, people suffer. There's a lot of tree damage, and a lot of those trees fell on houses, but it's isolated to the far end of Woodland Road." Power was still out at 7 p.m. yesterday in the White Oak area. A spokesman for Dominion Power said 1,429 customers were still without electricity at that time, but the company expected all power to be restored by this morning, with 63 crews out working all night.
To reach MICHAEL ZITZ: 540/374-5408 mikez@freelancestar.com
Date published: 5/10/2004
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