The Sun
Sunnyvale's Newspaper

Photograph by Christopher Gardner

Hit and Run

Freak tornado injures no one, but leaves behind costly damage

By Justin Berton and Steve Enders

Bob Van Hoy was using his rototiller to turn soil in his back yard Monday afternoon, getting ready to plant a new patch of tomatoes, when his wife, Beverly, called him inside because the lightning storm and high winds were becoming unnerving.

"As soon as I got inside, it was a hell of a roar; sounded like a low-flying airplane," said Van Hoy, 72, as he stood on his front lawn Monday afternoon clinging to a small piece of his roof 30 minutes after a tornado raced down his street, Plymouth Avenue.

From their garage window, the Van Hoys watched in disbelief just after 4:40 p.m. as the powerful cloud of debris and wind hovered perilously above the two-story house across the street, blowing out windows and ripping up the roof.

"Then it came back toward us," Beverly Van Hoy recalled.

As she and her husband backpedaled from the window, they let out a sigh of relief as the mysterious cloud narrowly missed their modest one-story home.

"And we thought it was gone," she said.

"But I'll be damned if it didn't come right back," she said, snapping her arm back over her head.

And when it did, the swirling cloud yanked a tree the size of a school bus from their front yard five feet into the air and tossed it 20 yards down the street.

The wind scooped up their two cars, a white Honda Civic and a tan Ford Taurus, and threw them a few feet from the driveway, setting them down almost parallel to the sidewalk. The windows shattered, leaving glass shards scattered across the pavement.

Within minutes, Bob said, neighbors were out of their houses patching roofs and clearing the strewn foliage from the once-sleepy neighborhood that resembled the heart of the Midwest rather than Silicon Valley.

"I can take the earthquakes," Beverly said.

"But this," she added, shrugging her shoulders. "I don't know about this."

The Anatomy of a Tornado: Meteorologist Dan Weygand explains how the tornado occured.

Not the First Time: Sunnyvale has been struck in the past.

The tornado that ripped through the southwest Sunnyvale neighborhood known as Cherry Chase Monday left up to 50 homes damaged. The freakish storm also downed power lines and spawned flash floods in other portions of the city--at Bernardo and Evelyn, water reached three-quarters of the way up motorists' tires as they sloshed through the intersection.

Sunnyvale Public Safety Capt. Doug Lamar said it was too soon to give an accurate assessment of the cost of the damages, but added it will likely exceed $1 million.

Most damage occurred in a three-square-block area, which included the 1100 blocks of Remington and Plymouth drives and Bernardo Avenue. Eight of the homes had "significant" structural damage, Lamar said, and city engineers red-tagged two houses Monday night, forcing the owners to find emergency shelter.

Officials at the scene estimated the tornado lasted nearly 15 minutes, skipping haphazardly over homes in a six-block area.

Moments after the tornado dissipated, a witness called in to KGO Radio and reported that her daughter had spotted a trampoline flying through the air; later, Freestone Drive neighbors stood gawking under a two-story-tall tree, its top branches supporting the 14-foot-wide apparatus. Witnesses at the scene said it flew for several blocks a few hundred feet in the air before landing.

Jane Rendon, who lives in the house nearest the tree, said she was sitting in the garage speaking on the telephone with her mother when the storm hit.

"The garage door was open and I told my mom, 'The wind is really picking up!' My husband got here and we kept trying to close the garage door and the wind kept opening it up," said Rendon. "There was hail the size of dimes coming down after the wind stopped."

Also after the wind stopped, she noticed the trampoline in the tree.

"I've lived here for 30 years and I've never seen anything like this," Rendon said. "We were one of the lucky ones."

Though the Bay Area sees one to two tornadoes each year, the last time a tornado of this magnitude was recorded was 1951, according to Dan Weygand, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Monterey, Calif. The 1951 tornado also touched down in Sunnyvale (see sidebar).

Weygand said on a scale of zero to five, Monday's tornado registered a one, which is much less severe than those typically seen in the Midwest. He added that the tornado was of "very short duration" and that a small area was affected.

Minutes after the tornado disappeared, sunshine broke through to reveal the wreckage left behind. The storm had blown out windows in cars, knocked down fences, ripped three-story-tall trees up by the roots and pulled off large chunks of roof, leaving debris littered across the streets and yards.

A metal traffic sign folded at a 45-degree angle, and mangled antennas leaned awkwardly on the ground. The owner of a purse, which the tornado had sucked out of a car, found the bag five homes away.

At nearby Cherry Chase Elementary School, officials reported the swirling cloud lifted cars from the parking lot and spun them in different directions.

At the Congregational Community Church at the corner of Bernardo Avenue and Remington Drive, bits of multicolored stained glass filled the aisles and pews after a tree came crashing through the high-ceilinged windows. The church also suffered severe roof damage.

And on Remington Drive, clean-up crews found a toolshed in the middle of the street.

Sunnyvale's community relations officer David Vossbrink said as of Tuesday morning, the affected portions of Remington and Bernardo were still closed to traffic, but would likely be open by late afternoon.

"People that have been inconvenienced and are hurt by their property losses, they're our first priority," he said.

He said that the city has established an information station in the neighborhood to help answer questions that neighbors may have on damaged property. Vossbrink said that no declaration of disaster has been issued and probably will not be issued.

On early Tuesday afternoon, Vossbrink said a representative from the state's Office of Emergency Services was en route to Sunnyvale.

"For us it's a major emergency, but we were able to handle it with our regular resources," he said. He recommended that families with damaged property contact their regular insurance providers to get information on monetary assistance.

City officials were still canvassing the area Tuesday afternoon, assessing the extent of the damage and attempting to provide help to those in need.

Witnesses in the neighborhood said the tornado was preceded by heavy rain, hard hail showers and pitch-black clouds that blanketed the sky.

As the winds picked up and the rain cleared, a magnificent rumble thundered through the neighborhood and a swirling cloud appeared.

"I saw the dust and heard the wind," said 12-year-old Eric Bautista, who was doing his science homework with friend Jenny Williams, 13, from Sunnyvale Middle School, when the gusting cloud appeared.

"I banged on the (bathroom) door," said Bautista, who was wearing a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt, still soaked from the rain. "Jenny, Jenny! There's a tornado!"

While some watched in shock, others were quick to take action.

Ray Jiminez, a construction worker and Sunnyvale resident, was driving north on Hollenbeck Road as he watched the tornado take form from the blackened clouds.

"I knew everything was going to be a disaster when I got there," Jiminez said, as he tossed soaking debris from a front yard.

"I'm just here to help out," he said.

As helpful neighbors nailed down a blue tarp to cover the gaping holes in the Van Hoys' roof, Beverly shook her head as she continued to remove the scattered tree branches from her front yard, piece by piece.

"I never want to go through this again," she said.

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, May 6, 1998.
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