Some residents go home to ruins

SUFFOLK — Hours after a tornado smashed through his subdivision on Monday, Dewitt Dorsey made a quick inspection of his home of 14 years and thought it looked salvageable.

But Wednesday, when Suffolk authorities reopened the Burnett's Mill neighborhood to residents, Dorsey got a longer, closer look.

The winds that sucked out all his windows appeared to have lifted the roof. Ominous-looking cracks and even a bit of daylight showed along the tops of some of the upstairs walls. Dorsey's confidence wavered.

"It hurts," he said softly. "It hurts."

Similar moments of truth arrived Wednesday for dozens of Suffolk residents, who had waited nearly two days to re-enter the disaster area and learn the fates of their homes. City officials allowed them into Burnett's Mill and the nearby Hilltop Farms subdivisions, which bore the brunt of the tornado damage.

Those whose homes had not been condemned were allowed to move back in, albeit with an 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew to discourage looting. Those nearly 150 whose homes had been condemned could gather up their valuables, undertake basic repairs, and bring in contractors and insurance adjusters to calculate the long-range prospects.

On the streets, tow trucks hauled away dozens of cars smashed by debris. One man managed to drive away a red Volkswagen Beetle with all its windows shattered and its tail-light fixtures dangling out of their mounts.

The long lines of emergency vehicles gave way to long lines of contractors' vans and trucks. "I think every tree service in the region is coming here," said Chris Pullen, who runs Pullen Tree Service in Culpeper. "There's a lot of work here, weeks' worth."

So far, the damage in Suffolk exceeds $21 million, said city spokesman Harry Kenyon. That includes 59 buildings destroyed, 75 with major damage, 258 with minor damage and 59 with such problems as missing shutters or shingles, he said.

But no one was killed or even severely injured, thanks in part to the hour of the storm's arrival, when many people still were at work.

The Suffolk tornado was by far the most powerful of eight tornadoes that struck Virginia on Monday. Meteorologists said it probably was a strong EF-3, with winds of 160 mph. It dropped out of a boiling black storm cell at 4:06 p.m. and cut a path 10 miles long and up to 1/4-mile wide through northern Suffolk.

Its power was evident Wednesday on a walking tour of Burnett's Mill. At least two homes were just piles of rubble. Others were missing roofs or full of holes from trees the tornado had turned into missiles. The condemned ones — including Dorsey's — were marked prominently with blue spray-painted X's.

Twisted and crumpled in Ken Barnes's yard lay a sizable part of the metal roof of the demolished strip mall, which was nearly a half-mile away. In his backyard, another large piece of the roof was wrapped around the trunk of a tall pine tree, 30 feet off the ground.

"And I had just cleaned up the yard," Barnes said with a wry grin. He was getting ready to climb onto the roof to try to patch several holes before it rained again.

Some homeowners quickly broke out chain saws and set to work. Others loaded belongings into vehicles. One woman just leaned against her car and stared at her battered house.

At the entrance to Burnett's Mill, two crisis counselors with the Western Tidewater Community Services Board looked in vain for someone to help. "Nobody wants counseling right now," one said. "They just want to see about their homes."

Bill Geroux is a staff writer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.