West suburban residents continue clean up efforts following Sunday night's tornado

Beverly Sedleseck surveys the devastation of her boyfriend’s home in Woodridge. He’s in an assisted living facility and was not in the home when it was destroyed by Sunday night’s tornado.
Beverly Sedleseck surveys the devastation of her boyfriend’s home in Woodridge. He’s in an assisted living facility and was not in the home when it was destroyed by Sunday night’s tornado. Photo credit WBBM Newsradio/Rob Hart

WOODRIDGE, Ill. (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Tornado clean-up continues Tuesday in Naperville, Woodridge, and other suburbs following Sunday night’s tornado. And people are counting their blessings.

Woodridge Drive and Jonquil Lane is some of the worst damage is. Cut-up tree trunks and limbs were lined along parkways ready for crews to grind them up. At least one house is totaled.

Sky Borso had tears in her eyes as she walked along Woodridge Drive on Tuesday morning with her bulldog; a house with its second floor sheared off directly across the street. She lives a block away and knows it could have been her house.

"It’s just hard. I can’t sleep. I’m having anxiety. I have knots in my stomach. It’s the 'what if?', you know?" she said.

Borso said she knew things were serious after hearing tornado sirens going off. She, her husband, and 8-year-old daughter headed for the basement.

"She’s sound asleep and it was like, do we wake her up and take her into the basement? It was a split second, ‘Yes, we do. We do right now,'" Borso said.

Brian Urban also lives nearby, on Crabtree Avenue, a block over from where the main devastation is. He estimated the tornado came and went in about a minute, and he at first rolled over to go back to sleep until his girlfriend and kids told him their neighborhood was hit.

"The neighbor’s tree was down, so we went walking through this...Monday morning around 12, 1 o’clock in the morning and just saw the devastation and realized just how close it came to taking down our house," he said.

Urban said he ignored the tornado warnings that blared from his smartphone as he slept, but after seeing the destruction, never will again brush them off.

"They are the most important thing we can have. You hear a warning, you get a text, get your butt in the basement, get yourself to the spot in the house that’s the safest. It missed me by literally houses, a block over and it’s my house being destroyed," he said.

The National Weather Service said the tornado that blew through Woodridge and Naperville was EF-3 strength with winds of 136 to 165 miles an hour.

ComEd’s outage map shows a few hundred homes still without electricity.

There were about 100 homes damaged in Woodridge, including one whose second floor was blown off.

Featured Image Photo Credit: WBBM Newsradio/Rob Hart