Tornado that hit Ursuline College may have built up steam in South Euclid; damage done on streets along Green Road

SOUTH EUCLID -- Officials believe that the tornado that made its way to Ursuline College in Pepper Pike followed a path that first led it through South Euclid.

Ward 2 Councilman Moe Romeo said the way the destruction looked in the aftermath of the storm that blew through the area beginning at about 3:30 a.m. July 20, it followed a path that led along Montagano Boulevard west of South Green Road, then down Emerson, East Berwald and Liberty roads, east of South Green Road.

?Looking at the trees damaged on those streets it looked as if the tornado blew down those streets, lifted itself up and went over Lyndhurst and came down again at Ursuline,? said Mayor Georgine Welo.

The tornado knocked down a wall at the Ursuline gymnasium and created enough damage to close the campus for three days.

There were no reported inJuries in South Euclid, but fallen trees and limbs created quite a bit of cleanup work for residents of the above-mentioned streets.

?It was the worst I?ve been through,? said 10-year Liberty Road resident Dennis Stropki. ?But I got off lucky. It wasn?t too bad for me.?

While residents of Liberty spent the days after the storm cleaning up debris, Stropki considered himself lucky because his damage was limited to a small dent in his car from a fallen branch, minimal basement flooding and fallen limbs in his yard. Other back yards on Liberty were strewn with fallen trees and branches.

?I woke up because it was raining so hard my gutter was overflowing and the water was hitting my air conditioner (outside his bedroom),? Stropki said. ?I looked outside and it was raining so hard I couldn?t see two feet.?

?Someone said it sounded like a train coming down the street,? said Beth Greisl, of East Berwald Road of the tornado.

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A large tree that stood about 90-feet tall fell from a neighbor?s front yard, across from Greisl?s home. Greisl?s home and those of several neighbors on her side of the street experienced no damage.

?I woke up (hearing wind and rain) and looked outside the window and said, ?Adam (her husband), what?s that in the street?? Greisl recalled. ?It was their tree.?

Greisl said those neighbors were unaware of what happened until firefighters knocked on their door between 4-5 a.m. and woke them.

A few houses were without power on the effected streets until early July 23.

Service Director Jim Anderson counted his department and most residents fortunate that the situation wasn?t worse.

?We only lost one city tree (on Telhurst Road) and five or six on private property,? Anderson said. ?There were only a couple of basements flooded and I understand that was because of clogged laterals.?

?Mostly there were downed trees,? said Acting Fire Chief Doug Stefko. ?They mostly came in the area of Montagano, East Berwald and Liberty.?

In one instance on Liberty Road, Stefko said, ?There was a fallen tree and a woman had just left her bed. The tree fell into her house just moments later and landed on her bed. There were also a lot of wires down in the area.?

See more South Euclid news at cleveland.com/south-euclid.

216-986-5862

Twitter:@JeffPiorkowski

Source: http://www.cleveland.com/lyndhurst-south-euclid/index.ssf/2013/07/tornado_that_hit_ursuline_coll.html

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