'It was horrible and scary'
Storms pound Riverside and Wright-Patt; NWS confirms EF-2 tornado in Clark County.
Having experienced the Memorial Day tornadoes that damaged her neighborhood in 2019 and caused significant damage throughout the Dayton region, Carol Gable and her family took Wednesday’s tornado warnings seriously.
The three stayed in the bathroom in their Riverside home for about an hour and a half, Gable said, during which time she believed a tornado was nearby based on the sounds she heard.
“It was horrible and scary,” she said, describing the sounds as similar to that of a freight train. “It was really loud, but it didn’t last too long, but then it was gone.”
Officials at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and residents and business owners in Riverside are continuing to clean up significant damage caused by one of several tornadoes in a storm front that pounded parts of Ohio on Wednesday morning. The National Weather Service in Wilmington confirmed a tornado in Riverside that continued into Greene County before weakening.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the NWS had confirmed five tornadoes in Ohio, including an EF-2 tornado near Springfield in Clark County that damaged and destroyed multiple homes. Damage was reported from Dayton to Columbus and in multiple areas along the Interstate 70 corridor.
Wright-Patterson saw wind damage to several buildings in Area B, a spokesman said.
“Our initial assessment from this morning’s storm is the damage is isolated to the southern side of Area B. Our initial focus right now is on safety and damage assessment,” said Col. Travis Pond, 88th Air Base Wing and installation commander. “I can’t speak highly enough about our security forces, fire department and civil engineer airmen for their quick response and hard work to assess damage and determine a path forward for restoring operations as quickly as possible.”
An EF-2 tornado is considered strong and has significant damage. It includes wind speeds of 111 to 135 mph, according to the National Weather Service. An EF-1 tornado has wind speeds of 86 to 110 mph.
An older hangar and another building received structural and window damage in Area B, which is located near the Air Force Museum.
The base closed and later reopened Gate 22B on Area B near Interstate 675.
High winds downed trees and caused power outages in Riverside with reports of damage in various neighborhoods, in and around Airway Road from near Greene County to the Dayton city limits, city officials said.
Airway Shopping Center hit
The Airway Shopping Center in Riverside had damage to storefronts and broken glass.
Storms also caused electrical outages and other damage at the shopping center at the intersection of Airway and Woodman drives, according to a dispatcher.
“We have trees and lines down all over,” the dispatcher said, noting that residents of Barrett and Travis drives reported damage, as well as the neighborhoods around Airway near the Dayton border, including Meyer and Hayden avenues and Lynnhaven Drive.
Damage was also reported on Eisenhower Drive across Airway in the Overlook neighborhood, Riverside City Manager Josh Rauch said.
“We probably didn’t catch the brunt of it that they did in Clark County,” Rauch said. “It appears to be a lot of straight-line winds that came thorough, particularly around Airway and Woodman.”
He also said emergency medical service crews responded to reports of some injuries, but no deaths had been reported.
“It’s mostly just been us picking up the (debris) that are leftover,” Rauch added. “So, fortunately we didn’t get hit as hard as some other places.”
Fire officials said a business in the Airway Shopping Center had furniture fly out through a window and out of the store. Furniture was scattered inside the business, Rauch said. Damage was also reported at a car wash in the shopping center and a fast-food restaurant reported a sign damaged, he said.
Peggy Henthorn, property manager of the Airway Shopping Center, said the storm knocked out some of the storefront glass at Big Lots and Yumi Boba Tea.
Henthorn, who lives in Piqua, said she received a notification from the property’s alarm company around 5 a.m. alerting her of a power surge on the site.
“I turned on the news and they kept talking about (severe weather) in the city of Riverside, so I thought, ‘Oh boy, this is not going to be good,’” she recalled.
No one was at the shopping center at the time.
“Everybody is working as a good team to get up and running again,” Henthorn said. “Nobody was hurt. That was our big concern.”
AES Ohio was at the shopping center Wednesday working to restore power to the stores.
Trees and debris
Two homes on Airway Road were struck by falling trees and trees were also down in WPAFB off-base housing on Spinning Road, Riverside police Maj. Matthew Sturgeon said.
Gable lives on Spinning Road in Riverside, a few houses down from a home that sustained substantial damage from a fallen tree during Wednesday’s storm.
Gable, along with her daughter Aimee and grandson Benjamin, took cover in the home’s interior bathroom around 4 a.m. after receiving phone alerts urging residents in the area to shelter in place.
Despite a backyard full of debris from fallen trees and a scary wakeup call, Gable was happy to report that she and her family made it through the early morning storms unscathed.