MANISTEE COUNTY -- A community is trying to recover after a powerful weekend hailstorm caused major damage to homes and businesses.
The storm happened in Onekama Township in Manistee County Saturday night after 9 pm.
Onekama Township’s Fire Chief, confirming Monday that the Portage Lake area was hit the hardest. Many homeowners we spoke to say they’ve never experienced anything like it.
Mike Haske has lived at this home in Onekama township since 1999 with his wife, Amy. He said the storm packed a powerful punch.
“It was incredible. You knew when you walked outside that it was just going to be bad,” said Haske.
He said he still can’t believe the damage the storm caused.
“The roof, the hood, the sides, the mirrors, the taillights all damaged, on my travel trailer, everything that was plastic on the top is just absolutely blown apart. Every window on one side of the trailer is broken. almost all the rear lights on it are gone,” said Haske.
In addition to his three vehicles and his travel trailer, the roof, siding, and gutters of his house also took a pounding. He said it’s quite the mess,
“To know that almost everything you’ve ever worked for is destroyed in less than 30 minutes is kind of hard,” said Haske.
He said there’ not alone, every house on the road he lives on was impacted. Across the street, his neighbors, the Careys have a secondary home on the lake.
John Carey said he and his wife, Sheri, were on their way home when neighbors alerted them to stay away.
“So, we turned around, went back home, and about 15 minutes later started getting pictures of our place from neighbors who were up here and who were showing us damage that was going on at the time,” said Carey.
Carey said when they arrived, they were shocked to see it in person.
“We’ll have to have a whole new roof. We’ll have to have siding pretty much throughout the whole house. We have just one little side of the house that had no siding damage, but the rest of the house has been pretty ripped up,” said Carey.
Carey said despite all the damage and concerns that water may have seeped in-they’ve learned they have an amazing community of support.
“We’ve had 4 or 5 neighbors come by because they know we’re not here all the time, check the place over and to make sure everything was secure. It makes us realize how good our neighbors are up here,” said Carey.
The fire chief of Onekama Township, Rob Johnson said they were busy all weekend, clearing trees and debris from roadways and doing welfare checks on people but it could have been far worse.
“The main takeaway from that is that Onekama sustained millions of dollars’ worth of damage in about 4 or 5 minutes, and luckily, we didn’t have any injury or loss of life,” said Johnson.
