VIRGINIA BEACH — I first met Al Chewning right after the Virginia Beach Ef-3 tornado tore through his neighborhood in the Greak Neck area of Virginia Beach on Sunday, April 30, 2023.
The neighborhood looks remarkably better than when I visited right after the storm.
A year later, we followed up with Chewning and his wife, Carol, who are still waiting for their home to be finished.
Watch: Drone surveys VB tornado damage
“Carol and I were sitting on a floor right here, six o'clock,” he said. “I was talking about dinner and playing with the dog. And then both our phone alerts went off.”
Then they remembered something they had heard me say about staying safe during storms.
“[We] went into the bathroom, just like Patrick Rockey told us to,” he said. “We both had our eyes closed. Because when the house started to shake, we held hands. And we said, ‘I love you’ to each other in case, you know, something happened.”
Then it happened.
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“It wasn't like a sound,” he told me “It was almost like something you wore or felt… But it was just an indistinguishable roar.”
Moments later, it was all over. The Chewnings emerged from the bathroom to assess the damage, initially thinking the damage wasn’t that bad. That’s when they noticed the red oak tree in their front yard had carved a hole right throught he front of their home.
“This entire ceiling was gone,” Chewning explains, from the roof to the living room, where they had been sitting moments before. “This floor had collapsed.”
“People just think that things like this don't happen to you,” Chewning said. “It does. It does.”
Even well-built homes can be badly damaged or even destroyed by a tornado. But substantial homes like these offer great protection. Following the shelter advice we give you works. That’s why we repeat it again and again during tornado warnings.
Miraculously, no one was killed or even badly hurt on April 30, 2023.
“You need to move fast and take it seriously,” said Chewning. “But you know, the consequences are dire.”
