EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. — The powerful E-F-3 tornado that killed six people inside an Amazon Warehouse also took aim at multiple Metro East homes.
After 60 years of marriage Bob and Mary Craft thought they had seen it all.
“We’ve seen floods,” said Bob Craft. “We lived in the mountains of New Mexico, so we’ve seen forest fires, and now we can mark off a tornado.”
They were home Friday night when they got warning that a tornado was headed their way.
“I’m looking out the patio door trying to spot a tornado coming when about 75 feet from me right above our pine tree all of the leaves started swirling and going up in the air,” said Craft. “It formed right there!”
The EF-3 tornado was only on the ground for about 4 minutes.
In that time the twister traveled about 3.7 miles leaving a path of debris scattered throughout the area.
“It’s amazing the amount of debris that came across,” said Craft. “It goes clear across on over to Edwardsville. They told me they’re finding the foam insulation way over in other towns. It’s power, and a lot of power.”
The storm claimed the Craft’s machine shed, a green house, and rows of peach trees but they’ve been blown away by the amount of people offering to help.
“A lot of our friends naturally asking, 'What can we do?',” said Craft. “A lot of them are driving up with chainsaws and everything.”
Amazon sent a crew with dozens of workers to help sort through the debris.
“It’s going to be a real chore cleaning all this up,” said Craft.
Looking around at the mess it may seem like an insurmountable task to try and clean it up.
“It did do a lot of damage to us here, but we’ve been through plenty of things before,” said Craft. “There’s a good guy in the book to look at and that’s Job. He went through a lot of things and made it, so the rest of us can too.”
The city of Edwardsville is encouraging everyone who experienced significant damage to call 2-1-1 so they can collect more information to help with the cleanup.
The Public Works Department will be continuing their work throughout the week.