Bonnie makes presence felt
RICHLANDS - Marine Sgt. Christopher Cales' alarm went off 10 minutes early Friday. It's a mistake that normally would have irritated him, but on Friday it probably saved his life.
A suspected tornado swept across Francktown Road around 5:30 a.m. and tore the roof off of the duplex at 748 Francktown Road where Cales lives.
The tornado was one of several in Onslow and Carteret counties spawned from Tropical Storm Bonnie. There was also some wind damage on Catherine Lake Road.
Cales, who is from Lima, Ohio, saw the roof peeling off of his bedroom and heard his neighbors' screaming. He rolled out of bed just in time.
"I crawled toward the hallway," he said. "It happened really quick."
He didn't say he was lucky. Cales just pointed to his bed.
"There's a good 200 pounds of Sheetrock on there," he said.
Next door, in the other duplex, Ernest Lemons and his girlfriend, Kimlion Chin, relied on what they learned on TV about what to do in the event of a tornado. Lemons is convinced it saved the couple and Chin's seven children who range in age from 7 to 16.
Lemons and Chin were asleep on the couch and heard strong wind that sounded like a tornado, Lemons said.
"When it hit, everything started shaking," he said. "We jumped up and I grabbed kids from one room and she grabbed them from another room and we pushed them into a bathroom. We pushed them into the tub under the blanket, and I got the phone to call 911."
The entire roof blew off of Lemons' side of the duplex. Two-by-fours were sucked off the inside of the brick house, insulation fell inward and shingles blew out onto the lawn. Corn stalks from a cornfield across the street littered the grass - in some places stalks and dried cobs were jammed as much as 6 inches into the ground.
Robert Guilliams Jr., who lives at 754 Francktown Road in the house next to the duplex, said he initially heard more than he could see.
"I heard thunder and then there was this downpour of rain like I had never heard before," he said. "I heard something that sounded like a freight train."
Robert Berry of Richlands, who owns the duplex, had two other empty apartments available for Cales and the family of nine to move into immediately. They spent most of Friday salvaging their belongings and moving into their new homes.
Onslow County fared Tropical Storm Bonnie well, said Mark Goodman, director of Onslow County Management.
"We did as good as we could do," Goodman said. "Other people were definitely hit harder than we were. Pender County had a couple of deaths and several were injured as a result of their tornado strike in Rocky Point."
