Karen Tighe has lived in southern Washington County for more than 50 years.
“On this corner,” the 76-year old said from a seat inside her home at 3023 County Road 31. Her windows were caked with specs of mud and debris from the outside. “When we bought it, it was just land.”
On Friday, that land was in the path of a tornado causing havoc and damage to houses in the Blair Executive Airport area and much more of the county. It damaged but spared Tighe's home, but also stripped her trees of branches, leaving several of them on top of her car parked on the gravel driveway just outside her front door.
A pickup window was blown out as well.
“My poor fruit trees,” Tighe said just a few hours after the ordeal. “I could cry.”
Most of them were planted within the first few years she lived at the corner of County Roads 31 and 38 with her late husband Leslie, who died 27 years ago. The trees were sentimental.
“To see them go was really sad,” the Washington County woman said.
Some of Tighe's neighbors to the west and north weren't as fortunate as her to have their homes still standing. Joe and Phyllis Zelfel's survived the tornado, but a red Chevrolet car was flipped onto a pickup in their yard. Their garage suffered and a new shed was completely destroyed, too.
To the north on County Road 31, just west of Skinny Bones Pumpkin Patch, a house was nearly all the way flattened as well. It was one of several in the county.
“I've got a few more neighbors I need to check on yet,” Tighe said, taking an inventory of who'd she all talked to in the aftermath. “I think I've called most of my family to let them know I'm safe.”
Tighe heard the warnings leading up to the storm.
“They said it was going to be bad and I go, 'Well, this is Nebraska,'” she recalled thinking.
As it arrived, though, Tighe was in her living space.
“I was sitting here, working on my crocheting and stuff — my knitting — and watching TV,” she said. “And the sky all of a sudden got really, really black.”
As it did, the woman with two bad knees and a vertebrae out of place in her back decided to seek shelter in the basement.
“It started hailing and I no sooner got up out of the chair, and turned to go into the kitchen where the steps to the basement are, and that window broke,” Tighe said, pointing to her front entry. “That door blew out.”
The storm left an impression.
“It sounded like an explosion,” she said. “The house shook and I didn't even make it down the steps.”
The tornado had already changed the scenery around her house for the worse.
“I figured, 'Well. If I go, I go,'” Tighe said. “When the good Lord wants you, he wants you.”
The Washington County resident and her neighbors lived to tell the tale, though. Tighe's phone wouldn't stop ringing and several people stopped in to check in on her, which she appreciated. It caused her pet great distress, though.
“My poor cat,” Tighe said. “I don't know what to do with her.”
Several area victims of the storm sought help from their neighbors in finding pets via social media. One commented on an Enterprise Media Group Facebook update, while another posted on the Facebook group “Lost Pets of Washington County, NE.”
Tighe's feline friend was accounted for, but there was still plenty of work to be done as she and her neighbors surveyed the damage.
The Zelfels appeared in good spirits, saying they were thankful for family, friends and their safety.
Tighe, meanwhile, thought of those who lost more than she.
“I worry more about the neighbors than I do myself,” she said. “So, I've been praying.”
