Couple at Portage mobile home park hit by tornado share harrowing experience

A couple living at the Oak Brook Estates Mobile Home Park in Portage, Michigan said they had just minutes to find cover.
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[@imscanon]

Glad they are ok. I spent about 3 hours or so in my bathtub as it's a windowless room on the interior of the building. I started bringing all my important stuff in there as soon as I got the first Tornado Watch on my phone so I was in there and ready when the first Warning sounded. The sirens were going off and on for hours. I'm about a mile from the FedEx building and northwest of it so I wasn't directly in the path. My niece was though as she lives on Garden Lane and the businesses on the corner by her house were decimated and she lost a lot of trees, but the house is ok, thankfully. 3 tornadoes in this area and one being an F4 is SOOO rare. Still, I like to be prepared, so it didn't take me long to assemble what I needed and hunker down in safety. I'm in a 3 story building with half of it in brick (my half, on 1st floor) so the one interior room with no windows was as good as I could get. BE PREPARED, FOLKS! While rare here, these storms do happen and you don't want to lose important docs (mine are in a waterproof/fireproof safe which I put in the bathroom tonight) and have clothes and food and water and flashlights and all that, and good boots, gloves, etc. Have what you need then hunker down and stay put. Emergency Responders do NOT need to deal with you clogging up the roads in their way.

[@JCSun77]

You sound like me 😂😂😂

[@amydavis4945]

So glad these folks are okay. I'm a moderator for Ryan Hall, Y'all on KZbin and we watched (on radar) as he Live Streamed during all these storms today and we were sending out so many warnings to Portage. I'm just so glad everyone is okay!!

[@JCSun77]

Yes thanks because our local news did not look significant & they didn't even know the 2nd one was occurring, Kalamazoo county residents were calling WWMT & reporting it. Unbelievable, will never trust them again

[@Vbluevital]

There were phone alerts sent out at least an hour ahead. This news channel and countless others were all warning people of it's path and probably arrival time. The National Weather Service and NOAA all alert even on your weather app.

[@danielmorse4213]

She summed it all up. God bless ya all. My home down the way did ok. Good luck.

[@kirkehoagg5905]

Great interview!!!

[@Vbluevital]

Pleased all are safe.

[@ruthgosselin8788]

Exactly you just have to hope I was on westnedge Avenue with no basement to get into sitting in my room nervous listening to the emergency alarm on my phone I hope that you all recover

[@ussco]

That's terrible.

[@theresemalmberg955]

This is why you should not wait for the phone alerts or the sirens before taking action. You need to be weather aware at all times especially this time of year. I have watched the evolution of our warning systems since Palm Sunday 1965, and really, nobody should be caught off guard these days. Not with all the long-range and short-range forecasts we have now. We know days in advance when the weather is likely to be severe. So if people are taken by surprise, it is because they aren't paying attention. I live in a mobile home park that has no shelter and I am ALWAYS weather aware this time of year. My two top go-to sources of information are the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids and Michigan Storm Chasers. Thanks to Michigan Storm Chasers, I knew around 3:30 PM that a potentially tornadic storm was west of Dowagiac and was headed for the Mattawan-Kalamazoo-Portage area. When MSC said the storm looked to be intensifying as it passed Dowagiac, that was my signal to go. At that time no warnings or alerts had been issued for Van Buren County. I got in my car and headed for the Antwerp Township Senior Center which I knew would be open due to the election. I was just parking my car when the phone alert went off--Tornado Warning. I went inside and took shelter with the other people who were there. Several minutes later the siren went off. I think we stayed in shelter for about an hour, during which time we received news about the Portage tornado. The point is, because I was watching Michigan Storm Chasers, I had about 20-30 minutes lead time to get to safety; had I waited until the NWS made an official announcement I would have had much less time, maybe no time at all. I also strongly recommend Skywarn training; it's free and very easy to understand. The National Weather Service has online videos as well as in-person classes. Anyone who spends a lot of time outdoors should take this training. You never know--you might be the first to see that quick spinup tornado that radar didn't catch, or other signs of impending severe weather. Skywarn training helps you to distinguish what is a real threat and what is scary-looking but harmless.

[@ruthgosselin8788]

I do wish we had information about what the different warnings mean as i got four alerts altogether two simply vibrating and the other two were vibrating and beeping im from new Hampshire and never experienced a tornado so they need to let people know know

[@JCSun77]

We did not even have sirens in Oshtemo

[@hardlines4]

🙏🏼🙏🏼

[@yoitsj]

3:06 Now doesn't an insurance company-like any other company- have a fiduciary responsibility to do what's most profitable for its investors? I would think paying out so many claims wouldn't be very profitable and it is in the best interest of the investor for the company to do everything they can not to pay any claims at all. And if they were to pay any, what factors would determined who gets an insurance pay out and who doesn't?

[@danielmorse4213]

I feel there was a failure in sirens too.

[@user-jn9gv9ve6e]

i heard sirens in vicksburg.

[@EricDush]

Tornado sirens all over Portage for many minutes prior to the tornado