5 years after devastating tornadoes, survivors keep wary eye on the skies

Residents who lived through one of the worst natural disasters to ever hit the Miami Valley say they are glued to the local news and weather apps on their phones when it starts to get ugly outside.

Survivors say they hope and pray that nothing like that ever happens again. But they say Mother Nature is unpredictable and community members would be smart to have a plan in place if the weather goes haywire once more.

Spicer Heights

Maulesh and Sushma Desai were in the living room and their daughter, Ekata, was in her bedroom when they learned from the TV news and mobile phone alerts that a tornado was headed their way on May 27, 2019.

Maulesh looked out the window and saw a tree bend sideways. The family ran to a downstairs bathroom.

Sushma said the wind was very loud and made an unsettling whistling noise.

“It was like 10 times worse than when we are in a plane,” she told the Dayton Daily News.

When it was finally over and they opened up the bathroom door, the family could not believe what they saw.

The roof of their home had been ripped off, their windows were shattered and the living room, kitchen and laundry room were gone.

Most of the house and many belongings were destroyed.

If Maulesh and Sushma had stayed in the living room, they may have been crushed by a brick wall that toppled over, said Meghna, their daughter.

If Ekata had been in her bed, she may have been badly hurt when part of her bedroom roof fell down, said Meghna, her sister.

Meghna said miraculously the bathroom where her family hid was not damaged and neither was Maulesh’s and Sushma’s bedroom, which was right above it.

If that section of the house had collapsed, Maulesh, Sushma and Ekata probably would not be alive today, said Meghna, who was out of town that day.

The Desai family also had a temple shrine near the downstairs bathroom that was untouched. The idols did not move an inch, even though they didn’t weigh more than a couple of pounds.

Meghna said her family is Hindu and deeply religious, and they believe the idols watched over and saved them that day.

“It was very traumatic in a sense, but truly since that day we’ve counted our blessings because it could have been much worse,” Meghna said.

Maulesh and Sushma Desai had lived in the tri-level home located on Birchmoor Drive in Beavercreek, with their children since 1998. Their home is in Spicer Heights, which is a middle-class Beavercreek neighborhood that is full of split-level and ranch-style homes.

Many survivors of the tornado say they are stunned that despite its power and destructiveness it did not cause many serious injuries.

A changing neighborhood

Spicer Heights looks very different today compared to five years ago, before the twisters struck the region.

Many homes have changed colors and have new siding, roofs, awnings, windows, fencing and other exterior features.

Meghna said her family’s home now “sticks out like a sore thumb” — but not in a bad way, it just looks very new and quite different than the surrounding properties.

Kim O’Guin, 66, who lives nearby on Spicer Drive, said most of the homes in her neighborhood suffered tornado and wind damage.

Her property lost seven of its nine trees, and her backyard looked like a jungle. The storm wiped out countless trees in the neighborhood, which significantly changed its appearance.

“We almost look like a new subdivision (plat) at times,” she said. “Most of us got hit pretty bad.”

O’Guin’s home needed about $15,000 in repairs. The siding, roof and gutters had to be replaced, and multiple cars in the driveway were totaled and their shed was crushed by a tree that fell down.

The siding on the front of her home used to be yellow. Now it’s a color called “buckskin.”

O’Guin said the storm was very destructive and the damage it caused took quite a while to clean up. But she said the disaster brought out the best in the community, and she was touched to see so many people work together to help rebuild.

These days, O’Guin said her family and neighbors take weather alerts very seriously. They pay much closer attention to the news and the forecast, and residents share information online, including through a local tornado support group on Facebook.

O’Guin said it’s eerie and a little nerve-wracking when the region is put under a tornado watch, which has happened multiple times this year.

“None of us take it for granted — boy, when there’s warnings, we’re downstairs,” she said.

Jeff O’Guin, her husband, said his family was fortunate that the damage to their property wasn’t worse. He and his wife said it was shocking how much destruction took place in about 15 to 30 seconds.

O’Guin said it’s a good idea for local residents to have weather alerts set up on their phones. She said a weather radio might be a wise investment.

Northridge damage

Like O’Guin, 9-year-old Howy Piatt now pays pretty close attention to the weather forecast.

Howy was 4 when the Memorial Day tornadoes struck his neighborhood. He lives on Ontario Avenue in Northridge, located north of Dayton’s McCook Field and Old North Dayton neighborhoods.

Howy and his family sheltered in the basement. He said the tornado destroyed his grandfather’s garage and ripped off his porch.

“Our whole house was shaking,” said Howy.

His mother, Shannon Piatt, said it was a scary experience.

“I never thought a tornado would hit us like that,” she said. “When we looked outside, we were in disbelief because everything was everywhere, like everyone’s personal stuff. It was crazy.”

Howy now tracks storms and weather systems on his phone. His family said Howy understandable gets a little anxious when bad weather is supposed to be coming down the pike.

“I swear we have PTSD from that, because anytime it storms or rumbles I have panic attacks,” Shannon Piatt said. “He gets nervous, but he’s like the weatherman, I tell you what, because he’s always checking his phone.”

Howy’s grandfather, Kevin Piatt, said the tornado damaged his chimney, roof, shutters, air conditioner, fencing and destroyed his garage and everything in it.

The 59-year-old Northridge resident said he found street signs from Webster Street on his property, even though the roadway is on the other side of the river.

Kevin Piatt said the tornado created a huge mess that took a couple of years to clean up, and basically every roof in the neighborhood had to be replaced. Piatt filled four 40-yard trash dumpsters with junk and debris from his property.

“It was scary,” he said. “I don’t want to go through it again.”

Piatt’s neighbor, Gloria May, said she never imagined a tornado could wind up on her doorstep. That night, she saw tornado warnings on the news but went to bed, unconcerned.

“I had always been told that Dayton would never get hit by a tornado,” she said. “But you don’t know what Mother Nature is going to do.”

May, 73, got up when her phone started chirping with weather alerts. She said that’s when “all hell broke loose.”

The storm ripped off some of her roof and siding and damaged her car and shattered a window in her bedroom. Still, she said that was nothing compared to what some of her neighbors experienced.

“I was lucky — I feel very blessed — because a lot of people lost their whole homes,” she said.

May said it’s unfortunate but tornadoes now seem to be a fact of life in Ohio.

She said this year her son’s house was hit by a tornado in Greenville in Darke County and her granddaughter’s house was hit by a tornado that went through Covington in Miami County.

The Memorial Day twister was the second tornado she survived.

When she was in her late 20s, she said she was camping at Brookville Lake in Indiana when a tornado hit. She said she and her children were tossed around their tent.

But May said the Memorial Day tornadoes felt different and scarier since they struck where she lives. May said it’s entirely possible that another storm could come along one day that causes as much or even more destruction.

But May said the Memorial Day tornado did have one upside, which was the removal of junk and blight from the area.

“The tornado was horrible, but it’s the best thing that happened to our plat from Wagner Ford to Dixie, because it cleaned out the whole neighborhood,” said May, who has lived on Ontario Avenue since 2003.

Ultimately, local survivors say there’s nothing that can be done to prevent another tornado from hitting their homes, neighborhoods and the local region.

But survivors say they will be ready to act and seek to safety if another twister ever comes this way — and they hope other community members know what to do.

“We are checking (the weather) and constantly getting updates,” said Meghna. “If it’s going to happen, there’s nothing you can really do — you just want to be prepared.”