June 7th, 2008 around 5:30pm a tornado moved through the outskirts of Wilmington, IL.

I had been painting the walls in the building all day, listening to the radio as there were so many weather warnings.  I took note when I heard a tornado had touched down southwest of where I live and opened a couple of windows in the building so I could hear the sirens if they went off.  I almost ignored them when I heard them go off becauase obviously they've never been anything to get too concerned about in the past.  I decided to get off the extension ladder and head into the house in the pouring rain to check on the dogs.  The sirens stopped a few minutes later but the sky still looked very threatening and unstable.  I was thinking about the paint drying in my sprayer and what a hassle that was going to be later.  I considered heading back out to the building, but stayed put and watched the sky while talking with my friend Peg on the phone.

The rain had let up and it started to hail.  At that point I was very uncomfortable with the way the clouds looked and for the first time in 5 years I put the dogs into the crawl space, anticipating that the weather was going to get worse.  But I never dreamed a tornado could actually touch down here, at my house.  I couldn't get any info from the radio at that point, the t.v. wasn't working and the sirens were silent.  I was having a difficult time seeing the storm line in the sky because my shed was blocking my view out of my west facing windows, I kept moving back and forth between the kitchen and livingroom.  By the time I realized that what I was seeing in the distance was an actual funnel cloud it was just beyond the tree lines a mile or so west of my house.  I ran to the crawl space and jumped in, grabbed for all of the dogs and headed to the far corner, the direction the storm was coming from.

Just a few minutes later I heard crashing above me and felt the house shaking.  4 of my dogs were huddled in the corner with me when the power went out, but true to her self as always, miss Maybie was exploring and hunting her new space, she never batted an eye about the whole ordeal.  Bang and Tangle seemed to have handled the unusual circumstances pretty well, although Bang did manage to head butt me as I tried to get him through the floor access into the crawl space.  Given was very stressed and wouldn't leave my side,  he was actually half sitting, half standing on me the entire time were were in the corner.  Sharkie may never forgive me for grabbing him by his ruff and dragging him to me in my rush to get to the far side of the crawl.  He's since had a lot of chicken treats, his mom has calmed down a bit, and so he's feeling somewhat less mistreated, poor baby.

When everything got quiet I moved toward the light of the scuttle hole and looked up, expecting the house to be gone.  Thankfully my house was still in one piece and although it has sustained quite a bit of damage, all will be repaired in time.

The building, fencing, equipment and many other things didn't make it through the storm...the photos below were taken this morning, around 6am. 

Thank you everyone for your emails, phone calls and prayers...I am so grateful and overwhelmed by the support, and so very fortunate to have my dogs and myself in one piece.

Dana

This is the wall I was painting

before  I went in the house.

By some miracle the path of the tornado seems to have literally split and went to either side of the house.  There is considerable damage all around... fences flattened, the posts bent nearly to the ground, the building demolished, the steel roof is completely gone.  I'm told that there is insulation

5 miles away in another town.

This is what's left of the fence on the west side of the house.

All of the posts snapped near the their bases.

This is a large piece of the building's roof...

the deck was mangled and the piece of

roof was partially in the the patio door.

View from the outdoor agility yard.