BLOOMINGTON — It's a strange weather juxtaposition in Bloomington's Fieldstone neighborhood: debris left by a tornado and snow flurries.
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"It's one of the strangest things I've seen as far as the weather goes here," laughed James Stand, a neighbor in Fieldstone.
The tornado hit Thursday evening, February 19. The tornado lasted 9 minutes and traveled 3.7 miles, leaving damage to several businesses and homes.
The National Weather Service Indianapolis office confirmed it was an EF2 tornado, with peak winds of 120 mph.
The Fieldstone neighborhood was along the tornado's path.
Misty Martin was out with her neighbors on Monday, trying to clean fallen trees in her backyard.
"It has been a long, cold weekend!" exclaimed Martin. "The day after the tornado, it started snowing. We were in the middle of cleanup and we had to start, in the middle of snow, picking up debris."
Martin was just a week away from selling her house when the tornado hit. She rented a wood chipper to get rid of some of the tree branches.
"We're just in cleanup efforts trying to get it ready for the sale on Thursday," Martin continued.
It's a similar story around the neighborhood.
"I'm also cleaning my backyard of debris," explained David Gross, another homeowner. "I got most of my yard clean."
Gross went on to explain that some neighbors had roof damage, while a few had structural damage to their homes.
Many residents used the weekend to collect debris and put it into piles in their front yard. Roofs were covered with tarps.
"Nobody was hurt, and that's the main thing. There was a lot of people that came out to help. That was really good," said Gross.
Gross used his Monday to fill things into the neighborhood's new temporary dumpsters. Monroe County Emergency Management brought dumpsters into the neighborhood to collect storm damage debris.
One dumpster is for tree and vegetation debris, and the other is for household debris.
In the household debris dumpster, there were things like roof shingles, patio chairs, a broken slide from an outdoor playground, and broken fencing.
According to Monroe County Emergency Management, the dumpsters were already full by Saturday morning following the storm, but have since been emptied.
There are two sets of dumpsters currently, located at:
- 5332 W Stonewood Drive
- the intersection of Bedrock and Tensleep, near Bosell Court
Dumpsters will be available for residents to continue using until March 6.
The work and assessments around the neighborhood on Monday have been much quieter compared to the work from the weekend.
"There was 300 to 350 companies running around," described Chris Arthur, who owns a Roofing & Siding company. "Chaos everywhere. Damages everywhere. People going every direction, and there was no end in sight."
Arthur said the snow, even though falling very lightly, has slowed the process.
"You can't get on the roofs and crawl around with snow," explained Arthur.
Despite that, each day, workers and homeowners make a little more progress.
"The cleanup process will be fairly quick. The rebuild process is what's going to take the homeowners months on end," Arthur said. "You're talking six to eight months before this housing addition is back to somewhat normal."
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