At 5:35 PM a tornado twisted through Park Slope, Brooklyn. I was on 7th Avenue in Dashing Diva (getting a pedicure) when the sky darkened like night and rain came pouring down in wild zig zag sheets. Suddenly wind was banging against the windows and blowing the glass doors of the nail shop violently open and shut. The employees were terrified and one customer said aloud: “Should we go into the basement?”
One of the manicurists locked the doors just as we heard glass falling on the sidewalk. Turns out a window from the House of Whimsy, a decrepit corner building on 2nd Street and 7th Avenue, came crashing onto the street.
By 6PM the wind had stopped beating and the rain subsided a bit. From the salon I could hear the sound of shopkeepers sweeping glass off of the sidewalk. Seventh Avenue was filled with rain water and water was pouring into the basement of Met Food, a grocery store on Seventh.
Adults and children came out of their homes to discuss what they’d just seen and heard from their homes. Many described the tornado as frightening.
“I opened my window because there was so much banging I thought it would break,” one neighbor told me. “Wait until you see the damage on Third Street. The pine tree in front of C’s building is down,” she said.
Walking home to Third Street between 7th and 6th Avenues I saw many, many tree branches and parts of trees lying on the sidewalk. My daughter just called to say that a whole tree was down in the turf field behind the Old Stone House, a historic museum near Fourth Avenue.
My sister was in Prospect Park with her daughter attending a PS 321 class picnic that started at 5PM. At approximately 5:35, the rain began and the parents and children started to leave the park. “As we walked out of the par torrential rains drenched us and panicked the people we were with. Everyone was screaming. No one could see in front of them. A tree fell right in front of us. There was an apocalyptic feeling. People had abandoned their strollers to run out of the park. I saw strollers turned over and abandoned backpacks. I ended up carrying a stroller (with the baby in it) for one of the babysitters to get out of the park. We went into the lobby of a building on Prospect Park Park and 3rd Street. Children were crying. While we were walking home we saw a tipped over mail storage box. It was really scary. I was terrified,” my sister, Caroline Ghertler, told me.
Photo: the photo was sent into Twit Pic and I saw it at the City Room blog. It’s 6:56PM and No Words Daily Pix is getting his camera and running out to take pictures.
I hope I never have to experience something like this ever again. My home did get damaged in the back yard area, but my damage was nothing compared to what I saw in my neighbor’s house located at 218 11th St. A tree went right through her kitchen and bedroom, major damage occurred and she didn’t have trees in her back yard. I really feel for her.
This was crazy
http://whatyourdonotknowbecauseyouarenotme.blogspot.com/2010/09/tornado-in-brooklyn.html
I was on 7th ave too, at Carroll st, in my car! All of sudden the sky went black and the torrential rains came down everyone stopped moving their cars. The wind was so strong that big vans to the side of me were swaying violently back and forth and I thought they might tip. I saw the trees swinging and a few branches fall down. I was so scared because I knew it was too late for me to run out of my car and I was under a lot of trees. After a few minutes it subsided a bit but there was so much damage, people could barely drive.
On my way home I saw sides of building down, hundreds of trees and large branches that had smashed cars and in the middle of the roads, scaffolding that collapsed and had trapped people, and even billboards that had collapsed into the street. It looked like the Park Slope area and parts of Bushwick got hit very badly. It was a terrifying experience for anyone who was caught in the violence of the storm.