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Storm rips through county
Tornado touches down in Chesapeake Beach
Friday, June 6, 2008
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photos by DARWIN WEIGEL
Patuxent High School graduate Heather Muirhead walks into Show Place Arena in Upper Marlboro under a foreboding sky Wednesday evening for the school's graduation ceremony. The ceremony went off without a hitch, but earlier in the day Huntingtown High School suffered power loss during its ceremony. It managed to continue and complete the celebration.
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On the afternoon of Wednesday, June 4, a tornado ripped into his Chesapeake Beach restaurant, Traders Seafood Steak and Ale, tearing the roof off the building and throwing it into the restaurant’s parking lot, where it severely damaged about a dozen cars and caused other damage.
Receiving word of the disaster on his cell phone, Luckett had to duck out of the Show Place Arena in Upper Marlboro before his daughter, Kelsey, 17, could walk across the stage and pick up her Huntingtown High School diploma.
Traders wasn’t the only business hit.
The windows at Tyler’s Tackle Shop and Crab House blew out when the strong winds blasted through.
‘‘It blew out our windows in our seafood area. I’ve never in my life seen anything like this,” said employee Evelyn Newman, who was working at the Chesapeake Beach business during the storm.
The wind uprooted two great big trees next to the tackle shop, she said. From Trader’s on down Route 260 electrical lines are down, she added.
High winds also ripped through the Bayview and Richfield subdivisions in Chesapeake Beach and through Kellem’s ball field, knocking down a few streetlights, said North Beach Mayor Michael Bojokles. Chesapeake Beach bore the brunt of the damage, he said.
Sharon Humm, Chesapeake Beach assistant town clerk, said that town officials were at the town hall when the wind blew out a few windows and tore off siding, but that everyone was fine.
The town hired a contractor with a chipper to go around to the neighborhoods and assist with clearing the debris from downed trees.
‘‘Everyone is pitching in. People are calling the town hall to volunteer to help,” Humm said.
Contrary to rumors, town Public Works workers told Humm that damage to the Chesapeake Beach Water Park is minimal, mostly blown-over chairs and debris from trees.
Chesapeake Beach Mayor Gerald Donovan could not be reached for comment.
Bojokles took a walk to survey the damaged area and saw several trees down on cars and one on a house on D and 26th streets, he said.
‘‘We are so lucky that no one was seriously injured” in North Beach, he said, though he had heard of one man outside Traders having to be hospitalized.
A local radio station received numerous calls reporting damage, so Bojokles called in to let people know that North Beach was all right.
Nicole Smith-Jones of Owings said she was amazed at the damage in that area. She was on her way home from work in Washington, D.C., and heard from her husband that the storm was bad.
‘‘It was a little scary,” she said. ‘‘You’re on your way to the house but you’re hoping that the house is still standing when you get there.”
Her husband, Jason Jones, said he saw a lot of trees get lifted by the winds and a barn near his house was destroyed.
Mabel Smith, another Owings resident, said she and her husband were not home when the storm hit, but driving home was frightening as they surveyed the damaged.
‘‘I just couldn’t believe it, I had never seen anything like that,” Smith said. ‘‘We’re not used to that sort of thing. It was always in the Midwest and now it seems to be coming this way.”
Despite a frightened dog, Smith and Jones both said their houses were all right.
It will be a while before things are all right at Traders, however.
During her graduation ceremony, Kelsey, the owner’s daughter, only suspected that something had gone wrong.
‘‘When I finally got a second, I looked over and he was gone,” she said of her father. When she noticed her father was missing from the audience moments after she walked off the stage, ‘‘something stopped in my chest.”
Once the graduates were dismissed from the ceremony, Kelsey got word from a younger sibling that there had been a tornado by the family restaurant, a Chesapeake Beach fixture.
‘‘I sat there in shock for a minute,” she said.
Kelsey said she immediately became worried for her friends and family who work at the restaurant. She knew a graduation party had been planned for her there, but at that moment, her party, her graduation and her own personal feelings were pushed aside.
Speaking to her father on the phone, Kelsey could hear the emotion in his voice, but he was more devastated to have missed her graduation and not be able to hold a party than he was by the damage to his livelihood. Kelsey said the two shared tears at that moment and she made it her mission to get to her father and the restaurant as soon as possible.
‘‘I don’t care if they said the beach was closed, I need to get there and I need to get there fast,” she recalled.
‘‘When I got there, I saw the destruction and literally I was in shock,” she said.
According to Luckett, the restaurant had 25 guests and 10 employees inside when the tornado touched down. No one inside the restaurant was injured; however, three state road workers were injured just outside.
‘‘My thoughts and concerns go out to them,” Luckett said. ‘‘... It's just devastation. When I first got here I just didn’t think it was real,” he said.
‘‘I just can’t believe my roof is over there,” he said, pointing to the roof lying by the side of the road.
While Luckett will eventually get a new roof, he said he will never be able to bring back his daughter’s graduation.
‘‘I can never get it back,” he said.
Kelsey said the only thing she is worried about at this time is her family’s restaurant. She hopes the restaurant will be operating again in a couple of weeks.
