SENECA, S.C. – Jermaine Gaines heard the emergency alert on his phone around 3 a.m. Monday warning him of possible tornadoes. He didn’t take it too seriously at first, but then he heard the wind and debris pelting the walls of his childhood home.
Not knowing what else to do, Gaines ran to the other bedroom, where he used his body to shield his 66-year-old mother as the storm passed.
In the cold light of day, Gaines picked his way around the white-sided house. He found his lawnmower hanging from a branch among the mess of fallen trees in his backyard where a bottle of gin lay next to a loaf of bread.
“Who knows how that got there,” he said.
Brutal storms moving into the East: Harrowing night of tornadoes in the South leaves 22 dead
Another surprise awaited Gaines out front – his porch is gone, the roof is punched open.
But, as he cleared his yard of debris, Gaines realized something else was missing – Oreo, his black and white cat, was outside when the tornado hit his home.
“I haven’t seen him yet.”
‘What else can be thrown at us?’
On a few quiet residential blocks of Seneca, South Carolina, homes, apartments and restaurants were battered by a tornado – whose wind speeds and size were not yet known – touched down around 3 a.m. local time Monday, according to the debris field analyzed by the National Weather Service.
On Monday morning, neighbors walked in small groups beneath blue skies. Some wore masks to protect against the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Most didn’t.
Others sat in folding metal chairs, staring in disbelief at fallen trees, shattered windows, missing roofs and downed power lines.
Kristy Martin said it was like a freight truck barreling down her usually quiet street.
First, she heard the hail. Then, the wind and finally, rain. She waited out the storm in her basement before heading to Dinas Brothers Restaurant, where she is both a co-owner and manager.
“I didn’t believe it was this bad until I saw it,” Martin said in the parking lot of the cafe, her back silhouetted by the ruins of the cafe’s storage shed, itself about a 100 yards from its normal spot.
“What else can be thrown at us?” Debra Simpson asked as she helped Martin and her sons clean up their cafe. They estimate the damage will run beyond $100,000.
John Sims said it was the tornado was a familiar sound, like the cyclones he’s lived through in his native Australia.
“Things were already hard with the lockdown, now we ain’t got nowhere to go. All our stuff is gone,” Vaneshia Wilson said of her second-floor apartment, where winds took the roof.
Wilson lost all her belongings. Her son’s, too.
“I don’t even have the words … it’s that unbelievable.”
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