Damage cleanup continues throughout area

“We’ve been out here for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Bob Ostdiek said Monday as he watched cleaning crews try to salvage his home.

It was among those in the Woodcliff area south of Fremont that was ravaged by Friday’s storm.

The storm knocked three trees into his lakeside house, he said. One of them badly damaged a second floor deck to the point where it wasn’t useable. The other two trees still leaned against the roof Monday afternoon.

“That one’s leaning toward the garage,” he said, expressing concern that the tree might still fall into the garage.

His brother Dennis, who is a contractor in Omaha, explained the damage to the deck.

“It’s compromised,” Dennis said. “The steps are tore out. We put a kicker on this so the deck doesn’t fall on anyone.”

The kicker he described was a wood beam that braced against the side of the deck.

“We got a lot of work in this already,” Bob said. “We did a lot of cutting and clearing up in the backyard Saturday. We started at noon after I went and bought a new generator. We got our power back on last night.”

When the storm hit late Friday afternoon, Ostdiek was not at his home. He said he was in Fremont driving to a doctor’s appointment.

“I left here 15 minutes earlier. When I left here it was clear to the north and to the south. I could see the cloud. I had a pretty good indication it was coming this way. I had no idea how bad it was going to be.

“I was in a residential area in Fremont when it hit,” he continued. “The wind was blowing so hard I could only go 5 mph. It came quick. I got back here about 5:15. I had already talked with a co-worker who lives by the fishing lake. He said it was bad.”

Lizanne Lefler is another Woodcliff resident who has lived there for more than 30 years. She said as bad as the storm was there was one thing more impressive.

“There were lots of trees down,” Lefler said. “There was one in the house �” in the bedroom. We’ve been doing lots of cleaning up the last couple of days. What really impressed me was that we had a lot of people come out to help. That’s the good side of this story. I’ve never seen so many people coming out to help. They were wall-to-wall.”

Jenny Goodrich remembers the storm for a different reason. She was at home in the Buffalo Knolls development, about 4 miles west of Woodcliff, when it hit.

“I was on the computer talking to a friend on the Internet,” Goodrich said. “It hit really fast. Our lights blinked. I knew the wind was coming up and it was getting dark. The lights blinked a couple of times and the power went out.”

As the storm approached, Goodrich said her 3-year-old son, Ean, was upset because of a toy that he left outside.

“I tried to run out to get it,” she said. “That’s when the hail started. I ran back inside and grabbed Ean. He had hid under the blanket in our bed. I went in our bedroom to get him. That’s when the window of our bedroom blew out.”

Goodrich said she had just stepped into the room carrying their 4-month-old daughter in a baby carrier and was about 16 feet away from the window when the blowing hail crashed in the window.

“I turned my back to protect Lilly,” she said. “I felt the glass hit my back. The blind was down most of the way. That protected us. I grabbed Ean and ran downstairs. The hail hitting the house sounded like thunder. I don’t know how else to explain it. It was incredibly loud. It started and ended very quickly.”

Inside the ranch-style house with a walk-out basement the only real damage was water and glass, she said. Outside was a different story.

“The roof was damaged. The siding is perforated from the hail. We lost some siding. There’s glass everywhere.”

As she waited in the basement with the two children, she said there was one thought: “Dear God, I hope our roof is still on when I go back upstairs.”

She said the walls in the house are concrete. So, she knew they would be OK.

“But anything can take off a roof.”