UPDATED: 7/31/21, 4:00 p.m.
TREVOSE, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — The Philadelphia region spent Friday recovering from Thursday's severe weather, with at least six tornadoes confirmed from that storm in Philadelphia and South Jersey.
The National Weather Service says an EF3 tornado touched down in Bucks County, leaving a path of major damage and at least a handful of people suffering injuries. Four more tornadoes from Thursday night were confirmed late Friday afternoon, along with two others confirmed in Ocean County, New Jersey. Another was confirmed Saturday afternoon in Lehigh County.
Several other tornadoes are suspected to have formed across the area, as well. NWS survey teams worked Friday to confirm reports of those tornadoes as they assessed the damage left behind across the Delaware Valley and New Jersey.
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In Bensalem, destruction 'like a TV show'
In Bucks County, Bensalem saw a level of damage that one official compared to "a TV show." Four people were injured at a car dealership in Trevose when the roof was torn off and cars were tossed in the parking lot. There is serious damage at a mobile home park in Trevose as well.
Set back off of Street Road near the turnpike, the service center at a group of Faulkner Toyota dealerships is completely unrecognizable. By all accounts, it looks like a bomb went off.
In the dealership lot, at least one car was overturned Friday morning. Windshields were shattered everywhere by debris sent flying by the tornado that tore through. Light posts came crashing down.
At the Faulkner dealership complex, the showroom windows are blown out, and the roof is peeled off. Insulation is torn out and hanging all over the place, as if the tornado beat the stuffing out of the buildings.
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Employees like Shazadah Shakeel came back to look at the damage and recalled what it was like when the tornado came through.
"I saw the trees bending," he said, "and once the one glass shattered, everybody just started running toward the bathroom, the storage room, anywhere they can get cover, honestly."
After about five minutes, he said they went out to see the devastation. The place where they worked had been reduced to a shell of itself. And even after all of this, customers and employees got out alive.
"I’m just glad everybody’s OK, honestly," Shakeel said.
Also in the path of the Bensalem tornado was the Lowe's Home Improvement store.
"It looks like a damn tornado hit this place, honestly, really," said Jake Nevin of Richboro, who came to pick up supplies.
He is not wrong. A tornado had clearly made its path through the parking lot, snapping trees and scattering debris everywhere.
"People are just standing around taking pictures. It’s pretty wild. We don’t see this around here for sure. This ain’t Kansas," he said.
Chrissy Harkins of Trevose was one of the people with her phone out documenting the devastation.
"This is the first tornado I’ve ever been in. It’s pretty wild," she said.
Lowe’s employees from other districts were brought in to help with the clean-up. Tim Pietraszewski of Warminster was mesmerized.
“I am in shock," he said. "Yeah, it’s nuts. It’s crazy."
Pietraszewski said he sees tornado warnings every year, "but I’ve never seen it like this — where trees are literally, like, snapped in half. This is the type of thing that you see in the Midwest."
Fred Harran, Bensalem public safety director, said the tornado touched down at 7:13 p.m. Thursday and traveled northeast, as far as the Neshaminy Mall and a nearby neighborhood called Belmont Hills, before it disappeared.
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The tornado ripped through the Weiss Trailer Park and the Penn Valley Terrace Mobile Home Park as well.
“We do have some severe damage to some trailers and some homes, but nothing life-threatening. We believe we’ll be able to get people back as soon as possible," Harran said.
A Penn Valley resident named Elisa, who declined to give her full name, told NBC 10 she had a panic attack when she saw the twister.
"Literally went into a panic attack," she said. "Everybody is safe, but there is a lot, a lot of damage."
Only six people are confirmed to have been injured, which is remarkable, given the number of people around when the storm hit.
Herran said this was the third storm in 15 days, and Bensalem was still recovering from flooding. Now there is the added layer of this storm damage for everyone to contend with.
River Road goes underwater
There is a line of damage from Quakertown to New Hope, Bucks County. The National Weather Service is working to confirm if a second tornado touched down nearby and in Lumberville, then again across the river in Trenton.
New Hope itself escaped the brunt of the damage. Power was back on, and people were out enjoying a beautiful day Friday morning. However, just south of town on River Road, there was a lot of clean-up to be done.
Mitch Bralinski was outside of his home in Washington Crossing when the sky went dark and the storm hit.
"We saw, like, a funnel cloud starting over the river," Bralinski said. "The winds picked up. That's when the power lines went down."
He said that's when he went down into his basement. His home was OK.
Up the road, closer to New Hope, Jesse Somodji saw a tree fall on a car about 100 feet away from his house Thursday night. He said the driver escaped without injury, and she was surprisingly calm about what had happened.
"She was just driving along, and it came down. If she was a little farther, it would have been a lot worse," he said.
That part of River Road through the area was closed Friday morning.
The Neshaminy Mall, just to the north of Philadelphia, was used as an evacuation center for anyone who needed temporary housing Thursday night.
The mall's parking lot looked all right Thursday night, but the lot at a shopping center across the street was in much worse condition. Part of it was flooded, and debris was scattered everywhere. A huge tree, with the bottom split in half, took up several parking spots. Traffic lights were out in spots. Stores closed early as they lost power.
Surveys damage from floods and wind in New Jersey
Friday morning, NWS confirmed two tornadoes touched down in South Jersey. Both had winds of roughly 100 mph.
In Mercer County, New Jersey, there was widespread flooding. First responders had to rescue some people by boat.
In East Windsor, a stretch of Route 130 was closed for hours because of flooding.
East Windsor Fire Company Deputy Chief Jay Laughlin told NBC 10 that they have been stretched thin.
"It's crazy. You know, water's flooding everywhere in the town. There's limited manpower in a volunteer fire company, so there's cones blocking off the roads. And you still have people driving around the cones and trying to drive through the water," he said.
Laughlin said he hasn't seen flooding like that since Hurricane Sandy.
In Ocean County, on Long Beach Island, dozens of houses were severely damaged by high winds. Thursday's violent storm ripped off a roof and damaged dozens of other homes in the High Bar Harbor section.
Neighbors wearing expressions of dazed disbelief were walking along Arnold Boulevard on Friday morning, surveying the damage and checking in on each other.
“I’m looking out at the lagoon and there’s sheds, debris from homes,” said Burr Benjamin, who lives in one of the hardest-hit homes in the area. He huddled with his wife and granddaughter in an interior hallway, terrified, as their house was ripped to pieces from the outside.
"Bang! There goes the front door. Bang! There goes the back door. Bang bang bang! There goes the windows," he said, recounting the experience.
Friday morning, the roof was completely gone, and a long 2-by-4 was lodged in the front a wall like a spear.
Up and down the street, there were holes in houses, broken windows, porches torn away, boats flipped off their trailers — and the cleanup has just begun.
The one positive to take away from this destruction is police say no serious injuries have been reported.
As far north as the Lehigh Valley
In Lehigh County, there was more damage from another strong storm system. The bleachers were ripped up at the Northern Lehigh High School football field. A number of school buses were damaged by flying debris.
A woman who didn't identify herself said she had to take cover when the storm hit.
"Yeah, it looks like a war zone. It looks like a tornado hit," she said, laughing, "because it's just trees all over then place, branches and stuff all over the place. We've had some storms with a lot of debris, but [this] was kinda worse."
Roger “Corky” Sell received a notification Thursday afternoon that alarms were going off at Slatington Airport.
“He said there is some movement in your shop, that building is armed. And I said well OK, I guess I’ll go up and check it out.”
When he got there, he saw one of his tenants’ planes tossed like toys across the field.
“That airplane there broke loose from its tie-downs,” he pointed, “got flipped over, knocked the landing gear off at the taxiway and set it on its wingtip right on the grass over here.”
Another plane was also damaged, and a section of a piece of a hangar wall was ripped off and thrown across the field.
Stay with KYW Newsradio for more on the region's recovery from the storm.
KYW Newsradio's Tim Jimenez, Hadas Kuznits, John McDevitt, Jim Melwert, Mike Dougherty and Eric Walter contributed to this report.