Two tornadoes touched down in Montgomery County, Maryland, Wednesday night, damaging at least four houses and injuring at least five people, according to Montgomery County Fire and Rescue.
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Dash cam captures footage of tornado in Gaithersburg, Maryland
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At least two tornadoes touched down in Montgomery County, Maryland, Wednesday night, damaging at least four houses and injuring at least five people, county officials said Thursday morning.
Firefighters were called to 88 emergencies last night, 35 of which were related to the storm, the department said in a news release.
During a press conference, Director of the Office of Emergency Management & Homeland Security (OEMHS) Earl Stoddard said the damage could have been worse, with about 15 tornadoes touching down across the state of Maryland Wednesday. The National Weather Service and OEMHS are still confirming the exact number of tornadoes with ground assessments.
“At peak we had about 1,000 power outages across the county. We’re down to a couple 100 at this point and those will come back online,” Stoddard said. “There are a number of crews out this morning doing work removing trees from roadways, and from power lines as well. So that work will continue.”
He also warned residents to be careful as they cleaned up their yards and homes, reminding everyone to stay away from downed power lines and call emergency services for help before dealing with a potentially live wire.
When it comes tornado warnings and phone notifications, Stoddard said the wireless emergency alerts are sent out to all cellphones registered with regional cell towers and that the Montgomery County alert system works directly with the National Weather Service.
“We had a lot of people asking questions, saying ‘oh, I didn’t get tornado warnings where I’m at.’ Well, actually, they’re very geo-located,” he explained. “So that it’s a very seamless process that goes quickly… very minimal mistakes can happen.”
7News First Alert Meteorologist Brian van de Graaff reported that there were 22 tornado warnings Wednesday, which is the fourth most in one day since 1986.
‘I was kind of terrified’: Harrowing moments when tornado hit
Residents in the Deer Park neighborhood of Gaithersburg are left to pick up the pieces after a tornado ripped through the area Wednesday night, toppling trees onto homes and injuring at least five people.
The twister hit Gaithersburg around 7:35 p.m. and left a trail of debris, structural damage and power outages in its wake.
On Holly Drive in Deer Park, trees slammed into multiple homes, including Jorge Majano’s.
“I heard the hard rain. I was like, ‘Wow, that’s pretty rough.’ And then once I hear everything flying around, and then I hear stuff banging on my window, I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ And then a tree hit my roof, and then I hear a loud pop, a big thud, like boom!”
Majano said that boom was the sound of another tree hitting the front of his house.
“I was kind of terrified, because I was like, ‘What do I do now? Do I die?’” Majano said. “I stayed inside and then the firefighters knocked in and they told me to get out right away, and I did.”
Majano was uninjured, but just blocks away, on Dogwood Drive near Tulip Drive, the occupants of another home weren’t as lucky.
Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service personnel responded to that location around 7:55 p.m. Wednesday for the report of a downed tree that caused a building collapse, trapping five people in the home, according to Assistant Chief David Pazos.
“An enormous hardwood tree, I mean the root ball on this has got to be over eight, nine feet tall. And this tree collapsed on the house during the height of the storm,” WTOP’s Dick Uliano reported from the scene of the home in the 400 block of Dogwood Drive.
All five were successfully removed from the home and taken to a hospital, Pazos said. Four were treated for injuries described as non-life-threatening and the other occupant had more serious, “traumatic” injuries, according to Pazos.
It took crews about 20 minutes to work around “pretty significant damage” and rescue the occupants of the home, fire department spokesperson Pete Piringer said.
“They were trapped under a lot of debris and a large tree on top of them,” he said.
Firefighters also assisted people out of homes on nearby Rolling Road. Power was knocked out in the area and the destruction extended beyond houses.
“There is a lot of damage in this part of Gaithersburg, specifically on the east side of town. A number of streets are impassable. It took a while just to get over here — twisted wires, large trees down and, again, some structural damage,” WTOP’s Dave Dildine reported from the scene.
Outages
WTOP’s Dick Uliano contributed to this report.
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