Volunteers help clean storm damage in Gage Park
Magda Vasquez and her daughter Shirley Woodruff sat on their front porch in Gage Park on Monday afternoon watching as volunteers and city officials broke down branches and packed them into large brown paper bags.
Earlier that day, branches and entire trees blocked Homan Avenue near 53rd Street and blocked some residents, including Vasquez and Woodruff, inside their homes.
Vasquez and Woodruff had spent some of the day cleaning up. A tree landed across their porch, breaking a window, and wind from the storm Sunday night sent a glass patio table flying and shattered it, Woodruff said.
“We felt like the house moved, and I heard noises, I heard thunder, things falling,” Vasquez said in Spanish. “I thought something inside the house had fallen and when I came (out) here I noticed it was the tree that had fallen across our yard.”
It took the storm mere seconds to cause that much damage, Vasquez said. On Monday afternoon, when she was able to go outside, she noticed cracks along the concrete base of the home that weren’t there before. It was as if the storm tried to take her home, she said.
“It was a really hard moment, really difficult because I thought it was the end of me,” Vasquez said. “But, thank God we have life. Material things can be rebuilt but life can’t.”
About 6 p.m. Monday, about 20 volunteers with My Block, My Hood, My City helped continue what city workers had started earlier. They used a chain saw to cut thick branches into smaller pieces, broke limbs and packed them into paper bags and swept the streets.
Jillian Carew said she saw an Instagram post from My Block, My Hood, My City asking people to help clean the block and decided to go.
“Oftentimes we think about other people coming to save us but actually we are the people that’s going to save ourselves,” Carew said.
Eddie Guillen also saw the Instagram post asking for volunteers.
“It’s heartbreaking to see,” he said. “Because some of these vehicles, they’re lifelines for residents.”
Guillen said the volunteer work allows people from different areas of Chicagoland to come together and help a community in need.
Piles of broken down trees lined Homan Avenue in Gage Park on Monday, blocking the sidewalk in front of a handful of homes that were hit by the storm. A tree was split down the middle, its top half missing.
Cars with shattered windows, fallen side mirrors and dents had been moved to make way for city workers to remove the trees from front porches.
Galdino Perez continued cleaning his yard Monday evening as his family sat on their porch steps, a saw sitting between Alberto Olvera and Lionel Nolasco.
“They stole our tree,” Perez joked.
The tree in their front yard is half its height now, and their black metal fence is bent toward their front porch.
Authorities said at least eight people were injured and at least 225 structures were damaged, many severely, from a tornado that tore through Naperville, Woodridge and Darien late Sunday. Meteorologists said the damage was consistent with an EF-3 tornado on the Enhanced Fujita scale, meaning it had wind speeds of 136 to 165 mph.
The National Weather Service on its website said, “there were also other areas of rotation and some with damage occurring and these may also have been tornadoes,” adding that more information is expected in coming days.
Perez said they didn’t feel the storm coming initially, and then: “We felt the way you do when someone randomly slaps you.”
A tree branch broke a window on the top floor of their home. He said he was worried that the same storm that was able to uproot trees could take the top of his house. He’s grateful that wasn’t the case.
Ernesto González, a marketing manager for M3, said the nonprofit received an email requesting their help.
“I think we helped out the city a lot and hopefully by (Tuesday) afternoon the block will be back to normal,” he said. “That’s the goal.”
