Lakeview residents picking up the pieces after violent storms
LAKEVIEW, Ohio (WCMH) – Community members in the Lakeview area of Logan County are faced with cleanup and recovery after Thursday night’s devastating storms.
The village is north of Russells Point on Indian Lake. Downtown Lakeview and the area known as Midway were both hit extremely hard. The Midway neighborhood which Rick Stanley lives in was torn apart by the severe weather. A mobile home flipped over and he helped two people out of the wreckage.
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“This had two guys pinned in it. look, the axels are upside down. That trailer literally flipped,” he said.
Several mobile homes in the neighborhood were turned upside down by the storms.
“You can’t process it, when you lose everything, we’ve got a house that’s standing but when the house goes up in the air and comes back down, what do you do,” Stanley said.
He was home when the storms rolled through. He rushed his wife, kids and grandkids into a closet and helped cover them the best he could.
“If that closet door would have came off every one of us would have been sucked up in it because we was right in the dead heart of the storm, there was no way out,” Stanley said.
A bit up the road from where Stanley lives is Travis Gause’s house. He was also home when the wind, rain and hail hit. Part of his roof is gone and one of the bedrooms is partially detached from the house, but his family made it through.
“It’s tragic, I don’t know what a lot of people are going to do, I’m trying to figure out myself, but I know there’s people worse off with family members hurt and they lost everything,” Gause said.
The Midway area is special for Stanley. He’s lived in his neighborhood for 50 years. Friends and family are neighbors. It’s also where his business is. All of it changed in a matter of minutes.
“Spent my life to build it, I didn’t build it for me, I built it for my sons,” he said. “If I die my sons got it, and one minute, everything’s gone. There are just no words to describe it.”
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