Dayton Tornadoes

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Soundchasm

Minister of Fire
Sep 27, 2011
1,305
Dayton, OH
www.soundchasm.com
Well, you've heard the expression "The photos don't do it justice". Take that times several thousand and you have an inkling. I was fortunate enough to be missed completely by a few miles. As the weathermen were doing an excellent job to stress this was a true emergency, I went out to check the weather.

No wind and bone dry. Came back in and the cable was gone. Next morning could NOT wrap my head around what I was seeing and hearing. There are enough occasions of weathermen finding a puddle to stand in and calling it a flood. I knew this was historic, so I made my way to see for myself.

I impeded no responders or crew of any kind. My photos track south to north across the westward path of the two tornadoes, so this this is a minor cross section.

I took no photos of the neighborhoods I drove through. About every 3rd house had a tree crushing a car or on the roof.

Every 20 feet my jaw dropped. Total devastation. There aren't enough contractors in the USA to repair this in a timely manner. They were using snow plows to clear the interstate!

The city of Dayton has lots of adjoining communities like Beavercreek and Trotwood. The following is from the Fire Marshall of Beavercreek. Beavercreek has 19,000 parcels. 1,000 are damaged. There are 40 acres in a parcel. That's 40,000 acres in Beavercreek alone!

The Dayton community has come together as a real force. Volunteers of every stripe are working. It's the end of the beginning of the recovery.

If you care to pitch in, this organization was newly created to put cash in the hands of organization that know exactly what they need. I've donated. And next week, I'll take my truck trailer and saw, and stop at the first mess I see and get busy.

Greater Dayton Disaster Relief Fund

Link to my public Facebook photo album

I'll insert a few photos in this post.
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Thanks,
Greg
 
As I look at photos others have taken, it's impossible to express the seemingly random nature of this thing. One house is spared, another destroyed. A wall and a roof are missing, yet the clothes hang neatly in the closet...
 
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Glad that you and your family are ok. Thanks for posting the Disaster Relief fund.
 
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Glad that you and your family are ok. Thanks for posting the Disaster Relief fund.

I wasn't sure it was appropriate. Gigantic thanks to the forum.

All the floods and fires pass from the news cycle and out consciousness, but reverberate for years.

Two of the supercells had almost a 40 mile path of touching down and lifting off.

PS - Most astonishing was only ONE fatality in Celina. The man's car was blown into his bedroom. Sheesh.
 
I picked up a degree at Wright state in '99. I was back a few months ago and was shocked how much the area has been developed.

On the day of the storms, my sister was riding from Lime to Hamilton, where she lives. They got home and were putting the bike away when the sky opened up.
 
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I picked up a degree at Wright state in '99. I was back a few months ago and was shocked how much the area has been developed.

On the day of the storms, my sister was riding from Lime to Hamilton, where she lives. They got home and were putting the bike away when the sky opened up.


They just can't seem to stop building everywhere. Trying to find out about the tornado, I stumbled across an older article describing the number of empty structures in Dayton proper. Just don't remember, but maybe it was 1 in 6?

When I went outside around 11:30 pm, it dry dry and calm. To the north, it looked like the shelling of Normandy Beach.
 
When was the big flood up there? I remember people talking about that when I lived up there. It seemed to have been moulded into the collective conscious. That and the mid 70s? Xenia tornado.