|
 Ann Brodd speaks with a neighbor as they look over the damage caused by a tornado a couple hours earlier on Friday. [May 12, 2023]. |
For the next two hours, the storm issued multiple tornadoes that carved a path through the middle of Dodge County and continued north through Thurston County, passing dangerously close to Scribner, Uehling, Oakland and Lyons.
About 15 minutes after that initial warning, Brodd was keeping a wary eye on the sky south of his farm, located about five miles east and two miles north of North Bend.
It looked like a cloud on the ground. Maybe like smoke from a fire. Then it took form and connected ground and sky.
“That’s when I headed for the basement,” Brodd said.
Emily Brodd, 20, had just returned home earlier in the week from her sophomore year at Wayne State. She and her sister Alexa, a sophomore at North Bend Central, were seeing and thinking the same thing as their dad.
“We could look outside,” Emily said, “and about a mile away we could see...”
“The dust, just spinning,” Alexa finished her sister’s sentence.
“We grabbed a couple of things and went downstairs,” Emily continued. “It was maybe a minute or two later.”
As the girls and their mom Ann were in the basement with one of their dogs, Daryl was still upstairs trying to grab the other family dog, a rat terrier. He moved into the stairway to the basement, still calling for the dog.
“I couldn’t get him to come,” Daryl Brodd said. “I saw him in the front room, then he went running. Not too long after that, the wall just, just went out of the house.”
 A machine shed once stood on the Brodd farm on the left side of this picture. It was completely removed by the tornado. |
Daryl never made it to the basement. He was still crouching in the stairwell when the tornado hit the house. Though there was no fire, smoke alarms were wailing, adding to the stress of the moment.
“I dropped down the stairway and then I heard it,” Daryl said. “It seemed like it was just seconds. I was probably stupid and probably went back up the stairs too quick and looked out.”
Windows were shatterd. Where the east wall of the house once stood was now a gaping hole. The missing dog was OK, curled up on Emiliy’s bed.
Chris Kloke was watching the twister from his house on the bluff a mile and a half north of Brodds.
“I saw a big old dust cloud down there,” Kloke said. “I was watching it and all of a sudden it just came together.”
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