Picking up the pieces

Standing where a 200-foot by 50-foot roping arena once stood, Bill Lindley watched on Monday as friends and family loaded sheet metal into a container for recycling.

The white metal sheets -- some picked up from a mile away, others still hanging in branches 50 feet in the air -- are all that is left of the building.

Lindley’s property on Saunders County Road W near County Road 13 was one of a dozen damaged in Friday’s storm that had straight-line winds estimated at up to 115 mph and hail.

“They tell me this was not a tornado that hit here,” Lindley said. “I have a hard time believing that.”

Since the storm hit, he has had at least 20 people out for about 10 hours per day helping with the cleanup. There’s still much to be done.

“We have wonderful friends and family,” Lindley said.

The storm snapped trees, sending them onto the roof of the home he and his wife and two children live in. The chimney was knocked down. Hail has shattered the vinyl siding on his home.

All of the older trees -- easily a dozen or more -- will be taken down, he said.

About a half-mile west on County Road W in the Buffalo Knolls development, almost every one of the homes sustained some damage. Many of the homes lost windows and had siding damaged.

Todd Kaiser didn’t lose a single window, but the storm ripped off a portion of the roof of his attached garage and pushed out the back wall.

“This house has gone through 80 mph winds before without a dent or scratch,” Kaiser said Monday while watching an insurance adjuster assess the damage.

His two children were are home with a baby-sitter when the storm hit.

“They were downstairs under the stairwell,” he said.

Almost everything that was inside the garage had to be thrown away.

Despite being without power several hours on Friday and another five hours on Saturday, Kaiser was able to save the one-quarter side of beef and the one-half of hog the family recently purchased.

“That was $700 to $800 of meat in the freezer in the garage,” he said.

Kaiser and his family have lived in the home since it was built about six years ago. Temporary repairs have allowed them to remain there, but they -- like many others -- still are cleaning up.