VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Families in Virginia Beach are still recovering after a tornado hit the area Sunday night.
In Broad Bay Estates, people there say the storm tore the roof off homes and brought down trees.
The damage to Jo Nicholson’s home is devastating. The master bedroom and bathroom of her home are destroyed.
“It’s a little surreal,” she said. “People always say, ‘I didn’t think it would happen here.’ It’s gone from a thunderstorm to a tornado so quickly. I’ve been in the house since 1992. It’s weathered all sorts of bad weather.”
Sunday night, she was upstairs in the bedroom with her daughter, Katherine Pluhowski, and her 2-year-old granddaughter, Millie, when an emergency tornado alert sounded on her phone.
“Seconds later, we’re standing right in the doorway. I look out the window and all the trees are going crazy. And I’m like, ‘Oh my God,’” Pluhowski recounted.
Nicholson added: “Then, we started hearing cracking noises. Quick as we could, we came down the stairs, did our best to get into the under-the-stairs closet as we were hearing, ‘Crack! Crack! Crack!’”
In the time it took them to rush down the stairs and into the closet, the tornado had ripped the roof off the bedroom where they stood less than a minute before.
“My daughter went upstairs and tried to open the door and it just was a sea of pink insulation and you could see the sky and the trees and everything,” Nicholson said. “The whole master bedroom and bathroom are gone.”
Nicholson said she’s grateful no one is hurt and the damage is limited to only one part of the home she lived in for years with her late husband.
“He died in 2014,” Nicholson said. “He was on a ventilator at my house with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, so I’ve been through a few things.”
Nicholson said she and her family have to leave the home for six months while crews repair it.
Right now, the family is staying in a friend’s Airbnb, but they have to be out in a couple of weeks, so they’re trying to figure out the next step.
In addition to her 2-year-old child, Pluhowski is expecting. She’s got another baby on the way, due in a matter of weeks.