EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. — When an EF-3 tornado hit Edwardsville in December, Kenneth Brockmeier took shelter in the basement of his home that was passed down from his grandfather to his father and now him.
"What's amazing, everything went through here and this house doesn't have any cracks on the drywall," Brockmeier said.
He did lose a carport, a tool shed, a smokehouse, and a hard Maple Tree that was about 150 years old.
"Everybody lost something, but you can replace things. You cannot replace lives," Brockmeier said.
Just up the hill, his neighbor Dale Wells gathered his wife and two young daughters in their basement five minutes before the tornado hit.
"Where we were in the basement it didn't sound as bad. It just sounded like a lot of rocks. I couldn't really hear the glass upstairs breaking," Wells said.
It only took 10 minutes for the tornado to wreak havoc on his house.
"A lot of windows were shattered, the gate was torn off in the back, a lot of personal property. The roof had to be replaced. We've got a lot of stuff done already since it happened," Wells said.
Debris from the Amazon warehouse also flew into their neighborhood.
"Amazon as far as being a good neighbor they had two crews out here for probably close to three weeks picking up Styrofoam," Brockmeier said.
"Amazon came through and they had a crew of people cleaning up but I mean the neighbors were pretty helpful in cleaning up. I'm hopeful that we won't have that much debris again," Wells said.
Four months later, Wells is taking what he's learned and will plan accordingly for next time.
"Now, that we've had a storm and it was as serious as it was, we'll probably prepare for it quicker as far as making sure we're all downstairs and we'll put some things away that were lost in the storm last time," Wells said.