Hurricane-force winds knock down trees, rip apart buildings
NORTHERN MICHIGAN -- Northern Michigan was whisked by the wind storm, and 7&4 was there as hurricane force winds brought down trees and caused some major damage.
Let's start first in Gaylord. If you were trying to fill your gas tank, it might have been tough. Electricity at the Holiday Station was out.
"As we came out, it sparked, checked it a couple times after that, and one time I came out, it blew up real good, it was quite an explosion," said Norm Wiechnick, a Holiday employee.
Winds knocked out this transformer outside of the station.
"It don't happen every day, luckily, you get a couple trees a month," said Emmet County Road Commission employee Matt Nestle.
In Emmet County near Cross Village, the Road Commission gassed up their chainsaws...knowing they'd have a busy day.
“As soon as you get done with one, you get back in the truck and get a call about another one," said Nestle.
Crews had nonstop calls and Matt Nestle wasn't available for an interview long. He had to rush over to help clear a tree off power lines in order to get power restored.
"Like a 24 foot section of the roof was approximately 80 to 100 feet in the air, flying like a hurricane," said Harbor Springs Fire Department Training Officer Ryan Johnston.
In Harbor Springs, a sheet metal roof flew off a storage lean-to.
"Just the wind, pushing up and tearing things off, it sounded like this entire roof of the ReStore was going to come down," recalled Mary Margaret Hornbaker, who works in the Harbor Springs ReStore.
Hornbaker, staff, and customers were told not to leave as crews worked to secure the building. A few cars were damaged by the flying roof, luckily, nobody was hurt. Crews knocked down the rest of the building, so debris wouldn't fly.
“It's nothing short of a miracle nobody was injured," said Hornbaker.
