CHESTERFIELD — Jennifer Abromowitz was on her home phone at the kitchen table on Sugar Hill Road in Chesterfield Saturday evening when she heard strong winds, and then a snap.
“It was a little crack and the place exploded,” she said. A tree came crashing down onto her small house, collapsing the roof above her head and busting out the windows. One large branch speared through the ceiling directly behind her head. “I feel lucky I wasn’t killed.”
Abromowitz was one of a number of Hilltown residents left with destroyed homes after a tornado ripped through Conway and Goshen over the weekend, bringing high winds across the region.
“I’m not usually afraid of much, but this was terrifying,” she said. “I was just shaking, looking at the roof caved in.”
Standing under that lopsided roof on Monday afternoon, Abromowitz pointed to the four separate holes where branches had pierced through, leaving wood chips and glass scattered across the floor. One even came through the top of her fridge into the freezer, where a log was still wedged on Monday.
Abromowitz had been preparing to leave for a much-needed vacation to Brazil, and was scheduled to leave on Sunday. After a busy year in which she adopted a teenage daughter, Abromowitz was looking forward to getting some relaxation.
“Everyone had been saying, ‘Look, you need to take some time,’” the 62-year-old said. She had bought her ticket more than a month prior, and was just about to finish packing when everything changed.
She immediately had to cancel her nonrefundable flight, and hasn’t even got around to canceling the return leg; she is fairly certain she’ll lose the frequent-flier miles she used to purchase it.
And the second-order effects of the destruction don’t end there. Along with storms big or small come the worries about similar disasters in the future, as Abromowitz learned when she stepped outside to survey the damage.
“I looked around and I was like, ‘Oh my God, there are other trees,’” she said in fear. She started thinking about cutting down some of those nearby trees — including one leaning precariously toward the house — to create a buffer zone in preparation for future gales.
Abromowitz will be staying for the week at a friend’s house while she’s out of town, but after that things become uncertain.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen, where we’re going to stay or what,” Abromowitz said. She said she spent most of the day just walking around the house in shock, wondering where to even start in cleaning and putting her home back together.
There were, however, some small silver linings in what was otherwise a devastating turn of events.
For one, she’s grateful for her community: the neighbors, workers and city officials who have helped her in the aftermath. And although the building inspector told her the crushed roof at the front of the house is unrepairable, a brand-new addition behind her house she had spent more than a year building was left unscathed.
But most importantly, Abromowitz was relieved her daughter wasn’t at home sitting at her usual place across the table from her mother when calamity struck
“It does make you think about what’s important in life — it’s people,” she said.
Luckily, no one was injured either in Goshen when trees came down onto two unoccupied seasonal homes across the street from one another on Pine Road. The pines remained lying across the smashed-in roofs on Monday, the wreckage incongruous with the blue skies and chirping birds.
Branches, needles and cones littered the street, where 38-year-old Mindy Kelly said her house is one of only two that are occupied year-round.
“It sounded like a freight train,” she said, describing how her home shook in the storm. “We’ve never experienced wind like that.”
Kelly said she and her family were expecting a storm, but had no idea that it would become a tornado. But the house she rents remained fully undamaged, and the surprise twister didn’t cause her much unease.
“I’m not afraid, we’ve lived up in these hills forever,” Kelly said, nonchalantly. “We’ve experienced blizzards, ice storms, snowstorms and things.”