‘How did we survive that?’ Workers ducked under table as tornado hit
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
MARMORA – Unharmed by the grace of God.
That’s how the employees at Sterling Tackle felt after a tornado touched down on Route 9 by their building, giving them only seconds to dive under work tables before the outside wall of their workshop was sheared off.
The whole thing took only seconds and then it was gone, leaving shaken but only slightly bruised workers inside.
“It was pretty crazy but it was over quickly as well,” said Hudson Tedeschi, an employee at Sterling Tackle who was in the second-floor workshop. “My co-worker pointed out the window and said, ‘Look at all that wind.’ We were like, ‘Whoa! Oh, that’s a tornado.’ And then we kind of felt the rumbling and stuff started shattering, the glass. We all just ducked.
“It is crazy that the worst that we got is a couple of scratches and bruises,” he said. “God was very kind to us. We should have gotten a lot worse. People should have died, probably.”
“That corner of the building, my brother was standing there,” Tedeschi said, referring to the corner where the wall was sheared off, “and he just happened to move away at the last second, because my friend pointed out the window (at the tornado). And he moved and then the tree took it out. He should have been hurt badly, but everybody is fine. It’s crazy. It’s the grace of God for sure.”
Tedeschi and Kris Breunig, wife of the owner, who also was in the workshop, both estimated it took only seconds for everything to transpire.
“It happened within five seconds,” Breunig said. “We went under the tables. We have big work tables. It was here and gone.
“It was unbelievable.”
She said they received the tornado warning on their phones just before it happened,
“We got that (warning), but we’ve been in Upper Township for a long time and we’ve never seen a tornado,” she said. “We were like, ‘Oh.” And then literally, it was so fast after that warning.”
She said people in the shop looked out the window and “saw it form right there in the street.”
Kris Breunig sits by what used to be the exterior wall of the Sterling Tackle business along Route 9 in Marmora, picking up fishing equipment scattered by the Aug. 4 tornado that toppled this tree, which in turn tore off the outside wall and crushed the van. The workers inside dove under tables when the tornado hit, suffering only scratches and bruises.
Breunig said according to her mother-in-law, the big tree that was knocked over was hundreds of years old and on a historic register. “It was a super, super old tree,” she said, sitting on the floor of the workshop by the gaping hole where the wall had been, gathering fishing lures and related materials that were scattered by the storm.
“It’s a miracle. It’s incredible,” she said, that no one was seriously hurt.
Tedeschi said it seemed like a longer time when the tornado was passing by.
“It felt like a minute, which doesn’t feel that long, but it was probably 10 seconds, max, before we got up and the tornado had gone through already,” he said. “It was so quick. And then we just tried to get everybody out of the building.”
The side of the building was already open but, he said, “You didn’t really notice it at first because the only thing that was going through my mind was, ‘OK, get everybody out, what’s happening, it doesn’t matter, we just have to get out of the building and away from the tornado.’ And when we looked from outside, the tree went through the building. What in the world? It was crazy.”
Business owner Steve Breunig wasn’t in the building when it happened, but was relieved no one was seriously hurt.
“I’m very thankful to God that everyone is safe,” he said. “Even people who came out with some bruises and my son had a little cut on his leg from some glass on the floor, but just looking at the damage – anybody could have been in or near one of those cars (a Honda minivan was crushed beneath the tree) and the way the roof came down, I’m just really thankful.”
Breunig grew up in Upper Township and he remembered something similar but not nearly as damaging when he was younger.
“Back in the ’80s there was what they thought was a tornado that touched down, but didn’t do near this much damage,” he said. “But they thought it touched down in three different locations. One of them was Bayberry Cove, where it moved some trailers. I worked there at the time. And it went on to Ocean City, but that was nothing compared to the power of this storm. I’ve never seen trees snapped off like this.
“You can even see from the cars on the other side. They were all in parking places and they got pushed sideways. One of the women who worked here was in her car when it happened. It moved her car against the other car and then a tree fell and broke her side window. She was really shaken,” he said.
“How did we survive that?”
“The first thing I thought when we were going down here (the steps) was to get away from the building,” Tedeschi said, “but once we got over there and saw the side of the building, and the tree, and the lack of building that was taken away by the tree, it was like, ‘How did we survive that? How did we get out? I think a couple of people got bruises and that was it. It was the kindness of God. It was ridiculous. Everyone in there, we are all Christians so we just believed that God was so gracious and kind. There is no way we should have come out of there with only a few bruises. It’s ridiculous.”