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June Storm: Tornado Damages or Destroys 125 Homes in Eagle

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Click "video" at left to watch the full news conference with officials from Eagle, Waukesha County and We Energies.

EAGLE - "We really are very lucky," said Waukesha County Sheriff Daniel Trawicki to Newsradio 620 WTMJ's "Wisconsin's Morning News" in describing the fact that no one died from what the National Weather Service described as an F2 tornado in Eagle.

The storm touched down at about 9:15 p.m. Monday night.  It damaged 125 homes in the area and destroyed 25 of those, according to Trawicki.

"We expect that number to go up," warned Trawicki.

"We came out of this very fortunate, a lot of storm damage, but no fatalities," said Village President Richard Spurrell Tuesday morning, describing both the good news and the challenging news after the weather disaster.

Preliminary reports from the National Weather Service say the tornado was four miles in length and 3/4ths of a mile wide, with winds of 125 to 130 miles per hour.

The tornado sirens were not working when it struck.

Authorities in Eagle have imposed a curfew of 9:00 p.m. until 5:00 a.m. for the area impacted by the tornado.

"During that time, no person will be allowed in or out of the contaminated area," said Trawicki.  He explained that the curfew could be extended if necessary.

One of the reason for not letting people go to particular areas without an escort is the danger of downed power lines.

"There was a lot more damage than we thought was going to be out there, so what you've got to do is determine where are the lines down," said We Energies spokesman Brian Manthey.

Spurrell said during a news conference that one person had to go to the hospital for injuries.

"All the injuries are still minor," said Spurrell.

The damages to many homes were not minor.

"Once the winds penetrated the garage and exploded the garage, it pushed the house off the foundation and basically laid all that debris down," said Rusty Kapela to TODAY'S TMJ4 HD's Mick Trevey.

While Matt Leppard was inside his house, a tree crashed into it.

"I wasn't sure what it was," said Leppard to TODAY'S TMJ4 HD's Diane Pathieu.  "I just heard the rather loud noise that a tree makes when it hits the roof of a house."

Leppard and his wife took their dogs and went into their basement.

"I could hear the tornado, or a very, very loud roaring noise," explained Leppard.  "I assumed it was the tornado and decided (to go to) the basement."

Sarah Zellmer and her family also had to move quickly as the tornado came through.

"We got the girls out of the bathtub and we ran downstairs, and we were downstairs probably 15 seconds and the windows blew off," explained Zellmer.

As the sun came up Tuesday morning, rescue crews were going door to door to make sure everyone was safe in Eagle after the reported tornado, and officials say that everyone has been accounted for in Eagle.

Spurrell said that crews were doing a search throughout the night and into the morning.  "Hopefully by then, it will be stabilized for the rescue and we can start recovering," explained Spurrell.

After the tornado struck, officials say that many people quickly checked on their neighbors and helped each other after making sure their own families were OK.

"You never want to see a tragedy like this, but this brings out the best in people," said Spurrell.

Eagle Police were attempting to catch looters who were stealing items from homes damaged by the storm.

A number of roads in the area were closed, including Highway 67 in Eagle. 

People are being asked to stay away from Eagle and Waukesha County's storm damage areas if they don't live there, especially because of downed power lines.

One Woman's Dramatic Story

Damage caused by the tornado that came to Eagle was described by the city's fire chief early on as "really bad."

One example: the case of Jeanne Babiaz, which she described in an interview with Newsradio 620 WTMJ's Jay Sorgi.

"We were in the house, my husband was in the bedroom.  I had just gotten out of the shower.  We had the TV on.  I could hear the continual warnings.  Lights had started to flicker.  All of a sudden, I felt tremendous pressure in my ears, and I could tell that the weather was severely changing very quickly.  

"Just in a flash second, there was a loud, loud noise.  I screamed at my husband to get downstairs.  As I was running, he came behind me.  It got dark.  We could hear a very loud crack.  We knew that a piece of the roof of our house had been torn off.  We don't know what else was going on.  

"We just made it downstairs and went into an area underneath our stairwell, sat in there and closed the door.  We stayed down there for probably 20, 25 minutes.  We didn't dare to come out.  We heard a lot of stuff going on around us, high winds.  We finally started making our way out.  We could see lightning flashing, a lot of lightning, so we could see what was illuminating around us.  

"We live in a bi-level.  We could see there was a tree that was right next to the front of the house, the front of the window.  We could see outside that the doors to the sheds were open.

"After about another 10 minutes, we made our way upstairs.  It was raining very hard.  We have probably 300 trees around the perimeter of our home.  We have been completely encased.  The trees have been taken out.  The entire yard is littered with trees.  We have pieces of house all over.  There's bent and twisted metal.  We can't even tell what all this mess is."

"We're a little shaken, but we're OK.  We can't even begin to imagine what's going on around the back side of us.  We are sitting and facing the outside of our house in the driveway, and it's just a huge, littered mess.  The front support on our porch has been ripped out.  Inside our house, when we went upstairs, as (my husband) was running downstairs, he could feel dry wall coming all over him.

"Back upstairs, we could see that there was a hole in the ceiling of the living room, and there was dry wall blown upstairs, but the house seems to be intact.  We're thinking that something probably  happened.  We probably lost a piece of the roof of our house on the west side.

"You can see the track where it came right through our front yard, where the trees are completely gone.  It's very naked on that side.  Across the driveway onto the other side where there's a line of trees, they're all taken down, too."

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