‘Can’t believe I made it’: Sherwood area hit by likely tornado

SHERWOOD, Mich. (WOOD) — Houses were torn from their foundations and overturned as a likely tornado ripped through the Sherwood area in Southwest Michigan Tuesday.

A News 8 crew saw at least eight destroyed homes in the village in northwest Branch County and a path of damage tracking nearly 2 miles northeast toward Union City.

One man was making a salad when the wind picked up. He kept making his salad until an alarm on his phone sounded.

“It was a warning: It was coming. Then about that time, I heard it,” Tom Austin said. “I looked out the back window and it hit. And every one of them trees just snapped off like they were toothpicks.”

The tornado was bearing down on a cluster of homes in a dip in the road near Sherwood, including Austin’s trailer.

“I just dove on the floor for the couch. When the whole trailer lifted off of me, stuff started flowing over me,” he said. “The carpet had pulled up off the floor and it wrapped itself around me. And I just grabbed ahold of the carpet, and I pulled it real tight.”

Once the wind died down, he yelled for help from a neighbor.

“I’m in here, I’m in here,'” Austin recounted. “And he says, ‘Where?’ And I finally got strength to sit up, and he saw me.”

On Wednesday, a neighbor brought him to the hospital, where he was treated for two broken ribs along with some cuts and abrasions. He’s now staying with friends.

When asked how he was alive, Austin said he had “no clue.”

“I think that carpet is the only thing that saved my (expletive),” he said. “…I can’t believe that I made it through that.”

Lynn Burns told News 8 she was parked in her Chevrolet Silverado in front of her house as the storm approached.

“We pulled in just as the tornado was hitting. We opened the doors and there was no way we were going to get out,” she said.

They watched as the house was ripped away from its basement. Neither she nor her friends who were hiding in the basement were injured.

Nearby, A.J. Burns, Lynn Burns’ relative, said he, his wife and two children took cover in the bathroom of their finished basement.

“We were all hunkered down in there,” he said. “And I was holding the door shut from the inside.”

He said he felt it shaking and debris hitting it like shrapnel.

“Didn’t know what the outcome was going to be. It was so loud, like I say, glass breaking, trees falling down there,” A.J. Burns said. “In the moment, you just hold on tight and see what happens.”

He and his family are OK.

Their home, however, sustained serious damage, with the upper level mostly destroyed. Their fifth-wheel camper was flipped over and tossed into their garage.

Next door, a couple was in their Dodge Durango as the storm moved through. They said it went quiet, as though the tornado had sucked up the sound.

“It was like as soon as it got super close, everyone says it was like a train, but it was silent,” Shania Hinspeter said. “It sucked the sound, everything up in it, you couldn’t hear anything. It just made your ears pop. It was terrifying.”

A tree snapped and their prefabricated home was toppled over onto its side. They were not hurt.

On Wednesday, they used a hole in the roof to go inside and see what they could salvage.

Chuck Blackburn showed News 8 the remains of the home where he lived with his wife, Angela, who died about three years ago.

He said they were together for more than 24 years and married for 13. The two spent 8,942 days living in the home together.

“She always thought it was cute that I kept track,” Blackburn said. “So I started counting the days after she left: 1,206 days ago.”

He said it was difficult to lose his wife’s belongings Tuesday, but he was glad there were no deaths.

“This is just stuff. Most of it was her stuff, and now I don’t have anything left of her. And that’s the hard part,” Blackburn said. “But this is just stuff.”

The National Weather Service issued a tornado emergency for Union City on Tuesday — the first such alert ever in Michigan.

The storm left behind more damage in Portage, where another likely tornado ripped through.

No deaths have been reported as a result of the storm, though some people were injured.

On Tuesday night, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency for Kalamazoo, St. Joseph, Branch and Cass counties. The declaration frees up state resources to help local authorities with clean-up and rebuilding efforts.

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