JOHNSON COUNTY, Ind. — Joel McCall has a gaping hole in his home in the Waters Edge neighborhood, just southeast of Center Grove High School.
“Obviously, mine got the worst out of this neighborhood,” McCall said.
His roof was torn off by an EF1 tornado and launched into a neighbor's garage down the street.
When the storm hit, McCall had been taking a Sunday afternoon nap.
The ceiling by his bed? It’s now peppered with wood planks that pierced right through.
“I was right there, yeah,” he pointed out. "Two-by-fours and two-by-sixes stuck through the ceiling. They're like swords stabbing through the ceiling in there, so it's really scary stuff.”
His son's screams sent them both to the basement, just in time.
"There's windows in the basement and we saw just chairs, debris, the guy's dock. There's a lake back there. The guy's dock flew out and ended up in our driveway. I mean, huge piece of dock. I mean the strength of the storm is amazing,” McCall said.
The Waters Edge neighborhood is prized for its peaceful lakefront backyards. But now, the sound of chainsaws pierce the air.
The lake is right where the twister carved a destructive path, taking down dozens of trees and damaging homes.
"So it came across the lake and once it hit the lake, it like, 'whooo,' sped up,” McCall explained.
“It literally, just out of nowhere, the storm came through and took out our entire backyard, our deck,” said McCall’s next door neighbor, Kelli Hinds.
Her family just put in a deck and a pool. Now, it has an unwanted swimmer: the entire roof of their pavilion.
"It used to be over there in the corner,” she said. “Now it’s in our pool.”
But she's thankful they got their four girls inside to safety before that tornado roared through.
McCall is also thankful that, even with major damage to his house, no one got hurt.
