Cleanup underway in Heber-Overgaard after suspected tornado

Well, a community in northeastern Arizona is beginning the long road to recovery after a powerful storm left a trail of destruction. Cleanup is now underway in Heber Overgard after a possible tornado ripped through that area Wednesday night, toppling trees, damaging homes, and knocking down power lines. Neighbors are now helping one another clear all of that debris while crews assess the damage and residents try to figure out what comes next. Yeah, the damage is just unbelievable and so widespread. Steve Nielsen is live in the Heber Overguard area this afternoon with the latest on the cleanup efforts. Good afternoon, Steve. Well, good afternoon. Actually, it was just in the last five minutes I spoke with the National Weather Service. They're here doing a site survey right now. They said they still can't confirm if this was a tornado, but they're just going to go through all of this damage to try to figure out the severity of the storm. It might take them another day or two to be able to give us a clear answer on that, but I'll tell you this. The people that live in this house are certain it was a tornado. They say that it actually started just to the left of us here. This is sort of public land right over here that they believe it started. Inside was Margaret and her husband. Her husband said he saw the funnel cloud start to come right towards their house right here, and look at this. This is their home that they were inside, lifted off of the ground. It used to be right next to the porch right here so we're talking about four five feet that it lifted up and pushed it back uh just an incredible scene out here and they're now trying to still figure out what's going on yeah be careful Levi we're trying to walk around all the debris that's still out here that they're just now starting to get a handle on take a look at that this is their trailer in their backyard right here that's now flipped on its side into a tree they said that their kids actually will come here on the weekend sometimes their son will come here on the weekends and stay there thankfully this storm happened on a Wednesday, so he wasn't in there. Also, they used to have a boat in here in this lawn. I don't know if, Levi, if we can zoom in on the motor of that boat. That's all that's left. The rest of the boat, yeah, it's in the neighbor's yard, picked up and flown all the way to another yard. And I want to show you a little bit more of the destruction over here. Levi, why don't we come back over this way, actually? Because tornadoes can be so bizarre in how they can just wreak absolute havoc. And if that's what this was here, we get confirmation here is one of those interesting things is look at this just this bag of peanut shells completely unmoved not touched their patio furniture not touched but the overhang it's gone destroyed we see all of this all over the place just wood snapped like it's nothing and you see this dumpster here everyone knows how heavy those dumpsters are they're huge they weigh a ton right it actually used to be on the whole other side of the property it was picked up and thrown across the property here. A wild scene. We talked with Margaret, the homeowner here who was inside. I'll let her use her words to describe what it was like. We were watching TV and the storm kept escalating, getting worse. And I'm looking and my husband's like, get on the floor. So I got on the floor and the whole house shook and moved forward and the lights went off. And then we got a message saying there was a tornado warning after you just went through it yeah exactly i know that is one of the frustrations we've actually heard from a lot of the people out here in the Heber-Overgard area is about the timing of when that message went out so i asked the national weather service flagstaff office here when they were just out at the site survey in the last 10 minutes just about the timing of all of that and they said every time there's severe weather like this um it's an opportunity for them to get better at this and to learn from it and continue to improve. But she also stressed, Megan Taylor with National Weather Service, that this is something that has happened the last time in 2010. So this is an every 16-year kind of event here, which really, again, just goes to demonstrate the severity of it, guys. Yeah, for sure. And Steve, that house being pushed four to five feet away from where that deck was, was just unbelievable. It puts into perspective just how hard those winds must have been. Absolutely. You know, they said oddly enough they have electricity again in the home but they said none of the plumbing is still hooked up obviously. They've got some dogs so they don't want to go to a hotel right now so they're still trying to stay and live inside of their house here as they figure this out but they're expecting insurance adjusters to come out here today and hope to get some answers on the future of this property. Well Steve that was a great report thanks for that show and tell just to show how much destruction was up in that Heber-Overgard area and we'll look forward to more reports from Steve on later editions of FOX 10. In the meantime, we have continuing coverage. All you have to do is scan that QR code.