(WWJ) Cleanup continues on Monday, and will take some time, after Oakland County's first tornado since 2014 — one of four tornadoes confirmed in Michigan Saturday night.
Dennis Vansickel lives in White Lake Township where an EF-1 tornado touched down with 100 miles per hour winds, and followed a path along M-59 for about two miles.
What is he seeing?
"Roofs ripped off everywhere...Salvation Army, Home Depot, Walmart's wrecked. All the trailer parks are wrecked and destroyed," Vansickel said.
The area of Teggerdine Trail and Pontiac Lake Road with especially hard-hit.
"It's crazy. I've never seen nothing like it before. Everything's destroyed, no phone service, no lights for three days. It's crazy."
In White Lake checking out the damage, WWJ's Charlie Langton said there were a lot of trees snapped in half and some uprooted. At least one garage door was torn off.
White Lake resident Mike Vandersis didn't see the funnel cloud, but said: "It looked like it was a tornado. I know that because the way that rain came in and as fast as that wind was...The yard was full of crap; all the sticks and everything."
According to the National Weather Service, only one injury was reported.
There were three more tornadoes confirmed in Michigan on Saturday.
In Macomb County, NWS said an EF-1 tornado touched down near the intersection of 34 Mile Rd. and Armada Ridge Rd. in Armada, with a 3.6 miles long and 700 yards wide. Damage was reported to multiple homes and businesses, with the downtown area hard-hit.
Related
The others touched down in Genesee County's Flushing, west of Flint, and in Port Austin, in Michigan Thumb region.
A twister that reportedly picked up and flipped cars on the Lodge Freeway in Detroit has not been confirmed as a tornado.
A spokesperson for DTE Energy says it will be will be another 16-hour day for about 1,000 crew members in the field, plus additional contactors working to restore power to thousands of customers in metro Detroit. At last count just before noon on Monday, there were around 72,000 homes and businesses without electricity.
Over 50% of those who were out have been restored, with the majority of remaining outages in northern Oakland County.
"We've made good progress in those hard-hit areas in Armada and around White Lake in particular, getting some of the main infrastructure back up, the lines that feed the substations," said DTE's Ryan Stowe.
DTE is hoping to have all customers restored by the end of the day on Tuesday.
Related
