Tree falls through home near Willard after overnight tornado

GREENE COUNTY, Mo. — It was a long day of assessing the damage for first responders, tree removal crews, and families who had houses hit by Tuesday morning’s storm. The tornado that was on the ground for 19 miles took out trees and power lines across Greene County.

“We’ve had tree limbs come down before but nothing like this,” Boyce Aaron said. “He lives four miles northeast of Willard. My phone went off and they said tornado warning. So we jumped up, got in the living room and turned on the TV.”

Aaron was watching our team of meteorologists as the storm moved through his area. He then heard a loud sound, which was a tree falling onto his house.

“It sounded like a freight train,” Aaron said. “The tree came through, the limb came through, and then part of the ceiling hit me in the head.”

Aaron said he only had a few scratches on his head after the ceiling fell on him. However, the tree left a gaping hole behind in his family room.

“The tree people were supposed to show up but they’re so booked ahead that we had to wait till tomorrow,” Aaron said. “It’s gonna be some major rebuild.”

A tree on the side of Aaron’s house was also uprooted, taking out a power line with it. That was the case for many places in Greene County.

“We did find a lot of trees, big oak trees and so forth down,” Ebenezer Fire Protection District [FPD] Fire Chief Nelson Prewitt said. “We had power outages and and then a few of them hit the weather heads to the home. So it was ripping the power off of the house and so forth.”

Prewitt said the tornado also took out a barn in Ebenezer.

“Sadly, this farm had lost a barn across the road in the last storm, what, six weeks ago or so,” Prewitt said.

With more severe weather expected Wednesday, Prewitt and others are in preparation mode.

“[Tuesday morning’s] storm just popped up and we, you know, had minutes to all of a sudden go, oh, tornado in our location,” Prewitt said. “We got to change this game. So be prepared to to be able to react within 5 minutes at best.”

Prewitt recommends people have their phones charged before severe weather hits and a flashlight handy during a severe weather event.

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