Tornado hits city's East Side

Damage estimates are expected to come in at more than $1 million.
& lt;a href=mailto:wilkinson@vindy.com & gt;By D.A. WILKINSON & lt;/a & gt;
and PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITERS
YOUNGSTOWN -- "It could have been worse."
So said Roger Bowden, owner of World Market Development at 938 Poland Ave., after his and two other nearby businesses were damaged by a tornado.
After surveying the damage, William Comeaux, meteorologist in charge at the Cleveland office of the National Weather Service, confirmed Monday evening that the storm was an F-1 tornado. By comparison, the May 31, 1985, tornado that ripped through Trumbull County was a much stronger F-5, Comeaux said.
"There's a lot of twisting of the debris. The pattern of the damage, the number of trees that were sheared off at the top -- there were a lot of things that were consistent with what we would call a tornadic storm. We had several eyewitnesses also that confirmed that," Comeaux said.
Packing 75-110 mph winds, it hopscotched across an 8-mile-long, 50-100-yard-wide path from southwest to northeast, first touching down between Gibson Street and Poland Avenue and dissipating in the Sharon Line area near the city's eastern boundary, said Walter Duzzny, Mahoning County emergency management director.
"It bounced over the Mahoning River and continued up between Shehy Street and Himrod Avenue" as it headed northeast, Duzzny said.
Saw spinning cloud
Mark Green, Bowden's shop foreman, said he saw the tornado form on the south side of Poland Avenue on Monday afternoon.
Heavy rain was moving east while the clouds were moving west. That, said Green, "was when the cloud began to spin."
Green indicated the shape of the cloud with his hands, saying, "I could see the 'V.'"
The foreman called out to Bowden and they moved inside the building.
"There's no basement," said Bowden. "Where the hell do you hide?"
But in a few seconds, said Green, the roaring sound of the storm ended. An electric clock at the company that stopped when the power went off read 1:25 p.m.
The tornado then knocked a rail car off nearby tracks before knocking down many large trees and more power lines on the East Side that blocked a number of streets.
Fire officials at both locations said they knew of no injuries.
Gary Wiery, a purchasing agent at Youngstown Electric Service Inc., 948 Poland Ave., said the roof was blown off a two-story portion of the building. The company is east of WMD.
Extensive damage
A metal roof was also peeled back on a single-story portion of the company, and a phone book was apparently embedded in an outer wall of the company, said Wiery. There, the wind blew out windows and blew cars in the parking lot into the building and into one another.
"The damage is pretty extreme," Wiery said.
The Ziegler Tire Co., 1014 Poland Ave., to the east of Youngstown Electric, was heavily damaged. Its roof was blown off and exterior cinder-block walls were stripped from its second-floor offices, where administrative assistant Melody Bloomingdale of North Lima survived by hiding under her desk.
"I was sitting at my desk on the second floor, and I heard the weather alert for a severe thunderstorm warning for Mahoning County. I looked out the window, and the wind was picking up. The trees were literally bent, kissing the ground. The rain started. The wind got fiercer. The windows blew in behind me. Debris started flying. I instinctively dove under my desk, and when it was all over with, I was buried in debris, and there was no building around me," she recalled.
No one injured
She and two other employees, Bob Beish, service manager, and Larry Siwula, service technician, escaped injury. "By the grace of God, we are unscathed and alive," she said, adding that Siwula helped her avoid live electric wires and escape via an interior stairway.
"She jumped underneath her desk, and that's probably what saved her life," Comeaux said.
Lean-to roofs were blown away in the nearby Ace lumberyard, and the Poland Avenue business, which lacked electric and phone service, was closed Monday afternoon.
Although the NWS issued tornado warnings for Trumbull and Mercer counties, no tornado watch or warning was issued for Mahoning County, Comeaux said. "The main body of that storm was up in Trumbull County. A small branch of it came down into Mahoning with a lot of rain," he explained.
"We're looking at the radar. We look at the data, and sometimes these storms will drop out of the clouds. It's one of those things that we work on every day. We try and learn, and sometimes these storms do things that we don't expect them to do,'' he said.
On the East Side, Sarah Cruz-Banks and her children were in her home at 31 N. Garland Ave. when the storm hit.
"We were standing at the screen door when it blew in," she said.
Then high winds began bending trees and damaged several small ones along her driveway. She said several shingles blew off her roof and her neighbor's home sustained slight damage.
"That's all it did," she said.
Cruz-Banks thanked God that no one was injured.
She and her children were already clearing the branches by midafternoon.
Updating damage estimates
Damage assessment teams from the Home Builders Association of the Mahoning Valley came up with a preliminary estimate of some $900,000 in exterior damage to residential and commercial properties, but Duzzny said the damage figure would likely rise today to well over $1 million as further assessments are made. The $900,000 estimate does not include personal property, such as automobiles, furniture and appliances.
The HBA figures were presented Monday evening to state officials. The figures will determine whether damage is sufficient for the area to qualify for federal disaster assistance for those who may be without adequate insurance coverage, Duzzny said.
City and county personnel will remove debris from public roads and sidewalks, Duzzny said. The HBA can arrange for debris to be removed from private property at the property owner's expense, he added.
John Lesnansky, a volunteer at St. Stephen Catholic Church, 845 Wilson Ave., said he was outside when he saw a mist, heard the sound of the storm and high winds began to blow. He and the church secretary took shelter. Several large trees were downed on the church property but there was no apparent damage to the church, he said.
Shortly after the storm hit, the Youngstown Fire Department warned residents to "be patient and use extreme caution due to downed electrical lines" and not to touch any branches or other objects that may be in contact with electricity.
As of Monday evening, city street department trucks were still removing fallen trees and branches from East Side streets, some of which were still partly or completely blocked.
Traffic lights were still out of service and businesses closed Monday evening due to lack of power on Logan Avenue between Wick Avenue and Hubbard Road.