Tornado

hits

David Picton

home on April 26, 2024

A tornado hit my son David's home on April 26, 2024. He and his family were not hurt. It started in Omaha at Elkhorn, NE., it went to the Cargill Plant at Blair, NE and in some places such as my sons house it was about a mile wide. Everyone is safe. David and Kathryn were at home when it hit. Kathryn was in the laundry room in the basement with her dog. She said when it hit the garage, some dust came in from the garage. David was upstairs looking out until he saw the top of the tree in the back yard blow off, then he went to the basement. Martha and Paul were at school. Cindy and I were driving back from Missouri Valley, IA.

There was also a lot of tree damage. Many trees had there tops blown off, some were uprooted, very few were left in tact. Some of the spruce even had there needles blown off. His house is in good shape but his garage does have some problems as you can see. His shingles on the house and garage look to be in too bad a shape. His metal building lost half of its roof or 900 sq. ft. David has had someone put a temporary roof over part of the metal building twice (but high winds keep blowing it off).

My son has a Starlink disk dish from SpaceX that survived the tornado. The dish seems OK but is loose. The metal building next to the dish lost its roof. He recovered everything for Starlink and rehooked up the Starlink disk. He had to wait until the next day until the power was restored. Then he checked out everything and all worked fine. I have heard there was other Starlink disks around that survived the same storm. It is said that these are some of the first known Starlink disks from SpaceX in a tornado.

David has insurance which should cover most of the tornado property damage, we hope. He had a lot of tree damage which insurance does not cover. He has had a lot of volunteers who have helped remove the trees. Some of the trees were blown out by there roots and some just broken in half. Most had to be cut down and removed. Now there are big piles of cut down trees. He had 26 Blue Spruce in his lawn which I planted and lost 21 of them. He lost 6 to 8 ponderosa pines about (18 inches in diameter) in his lawn which Dianne planted when David was 1 or 2 years old. There were other trees in his lawn which he lost. The insurance companies do not cover the loss of trees.

Out in my field south of his house is a roof from a neighbors house. In my field Southwest is a barn roof which I do not know where it come from. In my walnut grove West is another roof which I do not know where it came from. In my field near the metal building are parts of the roof from the metal building such as chunks of sheets of metal. Somehow this must be cleaned up. His house and the shingles on his house are in good shape and not hurt.

The insurance companies pay David. Then it is up to David to sign contracts with builders to make the repairs. He must also coordinate the work of the volunteers. The government also has money for repairs but I do not think David can get any of this money. There are many homes that have lost there roofs or been flattened, all the way to Omaha in a strip up to a mile wide. It my be difficult to schedule a builder to do repairs and put on roofs such as his metal roof for his metal building because of the number of people that have damage.

The following are some of the pictures of damage at his home and a few South of his place.

His garage door on his house. The garage on that side was moved about two inches off its foundation.

Notice that his air conditioner is laying on its side.

The above is his steel metal building. It is 1800 sq. ft. in size and lost a half of its roof. David's Starlink disk is located somewhere near the area of lower left of the picture.