Residents Recover After Tornado Whips Berkeley Heights

A confirmed tornado hacked down trees and ripped out power lines for many on Monday morning in Berkeley Heights, before tearing through New Providence and Summit, and residents were still cleaning up the damages on Tuesday afternoon.

The EF-0 tornado touched down near the Passaic River just west of Garfield Street with estimated wind speeds at 85 mph, according to the National Weather Service. Thousands were without power, although most residents had power restored on Tuesday.

See photos of the damage in Berkeley Heights here.

Utility and tree removal crews cleaned up the tornado’s damage along Snyder Avenue and Shady Grove Lane on Tuesday afternoon, one of the hardest hit areas between the three towns. Some residents on those two streets and La Secla Place had piles of debris stacked at the foot of their properties, while others were still cleaning up the mess.

Pri Knorr, a Snyder Avenue resident since 1998 with her husband Chris, was home with her son and three daughters when she got a phone call from her husband.

“I called Pri on the way to work. I was heading down to Old Bridge and I said, ‘there’s a tornado warning; they interrupted the radio. They never do that,’” Chris said.  

Pri said she looked out one of the bedroom windows into the backyard and saw a huge gust of wind nearly toppling trees to the ground.

“[Debris] was hitting our siding. It was pushing the tile table. I just saw stuff flying. All of a sudden, the rain shifted from a heavy downpour to this huge sheet horizontally blowing straight across the yard,” Pri said. “I called to the girls and said, ‘girls, downstairs!’ and they all ran downstairs to the basement. I thought I heard breaking glass. I got down to the kitchen and I looked out to see [if the sliding glass door] had broken glass, [which it didn’t], and then it was just over.”

There’s a path in the woods behind the Knorrs’ home where the tornado must have come through, Chris said. There was also a clearing in the woods where one could walk through before, which is now blocked by fallen trees, limbs and debris.

“You can see where it came through. You can see a path right through where it looked like it jumped off [Passaic] River. It must have come right through the yard and missed the house,” Chris told Patch. “I don’t know how it didn’t do anything to the house. [There were] trees leaning from the storm [Sandy] and they all dropped. It’s a mess. But all things considered, not too bad.”

Lucinda Hayes, a resident on Ferndale Drive in Berkeley Heights, said she also had a lot of trees knocked down on her property from the tornado.

“One very large one fell in my backyard from my neighbors yard, but it didn't hit our home. One of my neighbors behind me did have one land on their home,” Hayes said. “The William Woodruff Elementary School, which backs up to my street, also lost a bunch of very large limbs from their trees.

Hayes says she was at work during the storm and her next-door neighbor sent her a text right after the tornado hit and said it was one of the worst storms she remembers. 

“There were really strong winds and [my neighbor] said that we all had trees down in our yards,” Hayes told Patch. “My other neighbor across the street told me that she was home during the storm and she heard howling winds that made her scared and that is when she went down to her basement. She said she heard there was a tornado warning, but never thought it would be right here in Berkeley Heights.” 

Other township residents are just as surprised that a tornado would touch down in Berkeley Heights, including resident Jim Koutoudis of La Secla Place. 

“We were lucky, and that was rated 0 [on the scale]. I’m thinking about the poor people in Oklahoma,” Koutoudis told Patch. “This is nothing, [but] it does enough damage and makes people’s lives uncertain for a short period of time. We’re not supposed to have tornadoes at high altitudes on hills. That’s the thing they say. It is very, very rare for this to occur. It should be a low-lying area of New Jersey. We’re high off sea level so to have it up here is very surprising.” 

Tiffany Escott, also a resident of La Secla Place, said her husband Steve was home with her daughters, Olivia (7) and Kaitlyn (11) when the tornado hit. 

“I was working in town. It started raining really hard, and then we got the alert on our phones that there was a tornado warning and we needed to seek shelter,” Escott told Patch. “So [Steve] told the girls to get to the basement. It was really windy and there were branches hitting the house. He didn’t see anything spiraling, but the wind and rain were whipping around.” 

Luckily, the Escotts didn’t have any damage to their property other than some debris. They had their power restored by 7:20 a.m. Tuesday.

Olivia says she was just excited that an ABC News crew had been on her street on Monday night. “I was on TV!”