Had Mary LeVander not invited Pete Kresich over to her place Wednesday night, he might not have been able to get out of his garage Thursday.
LeVander brought Kresich, of Griffith, back to his house on Manor Avenue Thursday morning after a microburst blasted through Northwest Indiana Wednesday evening. The pine tree that graced his yard since at least 1985 was firmly lodged in his garage while the top of a tree that obliterated his next door neighbor’s roof dangled precariously in his backyard.
“I’m so thankful the folks (next door) are gone, because (dealing with this aftermath) is brutal,” Kresich said incredulously. “What a shame.”
The National Weather Service’s Chicago office reported on its website that scattered thunderstorms developed across northern Illinois and northwest Indiana, with “concentrated areas of notable straight-line wind damage occurred in and near Streamwood, Bartlett, and Hanover Park, (Illinois) and also in and near Griffith and Merrillville.”
Griffith Town Council President Rick Ryfa, R-3, put a finer point on what happened.
“We got hammered,” he said Thursday. “It was three-to-four minutes of intense hail and wind, and then it was gone.”
But not before taking out more than 300 trees and causing a ton of damage concentrated in the central and southern part of town, according to Griffith Fire Department estimates, Ryfa said. He called the damage “horrendous.”
“I spoke to (Gov. Mike Braun) this morning, and the state’s Director of Homeland Security has arrived to assess the situation,” he said. “Lake County is still under an emergency declaration (from the June 11 tornadoes), so we’ll do the procedural stuff here. But residents are also having widespread issues with water because of having no power; last update we got, it was 4,800 residents without power.
“We are staffed at Town Hall, and we’re doing the best we can.”
The town closed off Broad Street at 45th Street Thursday morning so workers could clear out the felled trees that firefighters couldn’t get to Wednesday night.
Ryan Blank, who lives in the Manor Avenue neighborhood, hung out with his neighbors across the street from the house that got demolished by a tree. He said if it weren’t for the lights flickering, they may not have known that anything was about to happen.
“We just got done with our showers and were getting ready for bed, and it was here before we realized what was going on. We couldn’t see a foot out the window,” Blank said. “A branch landed onto the porch and hit the soffit, and we heard that.”
No one currently lives in the house with the giant tree in its roof, neighbor Jolene Hetrick said. She heard the crash but wasn’t sure what it was at first.
“I thought our neighbor’s car had flipped, but then I got to the window and was like “Oh! That’s a tree,'” Hetrick said. “This is the worst it’s been on this street in a while. We always have power outages, but not this.”
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Highland also suffered some damage, largely centered in the Boulevard Estates neighborhood on the Highland-Griffith border. Highland Clerk-Treasurer Mark Herak offered solace to all those affected.
“Prayers to those affected, particularly in Highland’s Boulevard Estates and neighboring towns of Griffith and Merrillville,” he saidm “We had crews out all night clearing down trees and helping with the flooding. Various town offices are without Internet. The hail sounded like it was going to break the windows, and power isbstill out in sections of town.”
Herak added that according to Public Works Director Mark Knesek, many people were upset that no warning sirens went off.
The storm also touched domestic violence shelter Haven House in Hammond. Dave Gearman, its board president, said a tree in the parkway crushed its fence and hit the a bedroom in the house’s north corner.
“We didn’t have any injuries, but we did have to evacuate and relocate all our tenants,” Gearman said. “We also have about $2,000 worth of food sitting in freezers without power. I’ll be heading over there later with my generator to get that going.”
The house, which is 100 years old, should be repairable, he said, so they just need to move forward.
“Everyone’s just grateful there was no one hurt,” he said.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.