SUFFOLK, Va. - It has been one week since a pair of tornadoes went through Suffolk Christmas Eve night.
One woman was injured, and several homes suffered damage throughout the Holland area of the city.
On Dutch Road, people are starting the new year picking up the pieces.
Friday, Clayton Gray surveyed his property after coming home with his newborn daughter, Madilynn, born right after the storms came through.
“I'm just really thankful that we're all still here,” Gray told News 3. “We were already worried about the pregnancy, but now she's here.”
Gray remembers the storm coming through while he and his family were inside their home on Dutch Road.
“We just started feeling kind of a presence over the house,” he said. “We just heard like a train outside. We heard stuff hit the windows. The lights started flickering, and then they just went out. Then, everything was dead silent.”
The storm damaged his roof and car, and scattered debris around his home and others nearby.
“There were shingles pretty far back there from our house,” Gray said.
Friday, he was still finding items around his property.
“We're definitely going to have to keep looking around, and just keeping an eye out for things,” Gray said.
A few doors down, Jeanette Wood recalls the storm.
“It was just so strange on Christmas,” she said. “I tell my husband we had guardian angels.”
Her home wasn’t damaged, but her family had no power overnight until Christmas morning.
She told News 3 the storm picked up her family's trampoline.
“That was in the back of our property where it meets the neighbors, and upside down on top of an old shed,” Wood said.
Both she and Gray are counting their blessings as they start the new year.
“It'll be a story that me and my two brothers will tell our daughter one day,” Gray said.
