EF3 Tornado in Chicago Suburbs

[Mike]

Saturday evening, all hell broke loose in our adopted home town of Naperville, where our son is a firefighter/paramedic. It ventured further east and created more havoc in other towns, but in Naperville alone it damaged around 130 homes, rendered around 20 uninhabitable, and resulted in around a half dozen hospitalizations. One of those hospitalized was apparently asleep in the home shown here; the Naperville Fire Department’s Technical Rescue Team was able to extricate both of the residents from the debris.

I haven’t had the chance to talk with my son, who was among the initial responders, but it was a very long night. 

The power of tornadoes is truly incredible. 

[Jake]

Yikes.  Drone shot?  Such precision devastation.

[Mike]

37 minutes ago, Jake said:

Yikes.  Drone shot?  Such precision devastation.

Crazy, eh? As you know, that’s how tornadoes often behave…an intense path of destruction with relatively little damage a short distance away.  

I believe the couple in this house made it to their basement just before it hit. Our son tells us that there’s no way they would have survived if they had been upstairs. He’s pretty circumspect about injuries and anything that would identify those affected, but in reading through news stories and social media accounts, I believe one of these two was the individual who was most critically injured. The firefighters extricated them pretty quickly, likely saving their lives.