MECOSTA COUNTY, Mich. — “Big storm just went through, we’re okay, very little damage to the houses but the barns are gone.”
Those are the words Cheri Chapin heard over the phone Saturday afternoon. She owns a family farm that got hit by a tornado. As soon as she got to the farm, she got to work.
“It was still pouring down rain, and you just wonder where do you start. And the first place you start is getting the animals to safety.”
Chapin says you can plan for tornadoes and big storms like the ones we saw this weekend, but it’s difficult to truly be prepared for the damage.
“It doesn’t matter what you plan for, it’s never going to happen the way you planned."
Neighbors came with trucks and trailers to help move cows to other locations, and veterinarians tended to the seven animals with injuries, losing only one, and working until nearly midnight. The next day - more of the same.
“We have perfect strangers who have stopped by and have been willing to put on a pair of gloves and just go to work,” Chapin says.
And there was a lot of work to be done. At its peak, the tornado clocked winds around 90 mph, with a path as wide as a football field. Four irrigation pivots were destroyed, one barn lost its roof, another collapsed and a third looks like it was never there to begin with.
“When you look at the damage, it looks as if the tornado hopped," Chapin says. "It hit here, and then it hit there, and totally missed the trailer house.”
The tornado was rated as an EF-1 by the National Weather Service. Nobody was hurt in the three tornadoes that touched down in West Michigan Saturday.
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