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One of the hardest hit was the popular The Lakehouse on Lizard Creek Road. Owner Rick Gardner called the Daily Herald around 9 a.m. Wednesday morning to report a tornado had hit his building. "I'm not kidding," Gardner said, "My sign is twisted like a pretzel."
Gardner said Amanda Gordon was inside the restaurant shortly before 9 a.m., cleaning the building, when she heard an unusually loud noise outside. When she went to the front of the building to investigate, the large plate glass windows that run the length of the building were shaking visibly and she watched as the large metal sign was ripped apart.
Gordon took shelter in the restroom and called Gardner. "When I arrived, I couldn't believe it," Gardner said. "There was debris all along the front of the building and all over the parking lot. Most of it was pieces of my sign."
Several large trees located on a lot beside The Lakehouse were snapped off 3-feet from the ground and many others were uprooted and lined up like fallen soldiers, which would indicate straight-line winds.
The heavy lid to an outside grease tank behind the restaurant was laying several yards away. No 30-mph wind could have done that, Gardner said.
There were other clues that the micro-burst, or whatever it was, was extremely strong. Shards of glass, from the fluorescent-tube light bulbs that had been inside Gardner's sign, were embedded like knives in the wood siding on the front of the restaurant and imprints were left of the metal end caps from those light bulbs. One side door was coated with the white powder residue from the bulbs that had smashed against it.
All of the debris had traveled more than 75-yards before hitting the building. Fortunately, other than the trees and the large The Lakehouse sign, the building was otherwise undamaged. Eric Schumacher, owner of Xtreme Clean, had been contracted to clean the glass from the parking lot and discovered the impaled siding. He was busy sweeping up the glass from in front of the building as neighbors began arriving to inspect the damage and tell tales of damage in their areas.
The Lakehouse boat docks located several hundred yards away were covered by several large trees that had uprooted and fallen on them. Across the cove, several large trees could be seen uprooted and laying in the same direction. One very large tree's root ball brought a dock out of the water with it as it fell over.
Across the street, in the Wildwood Point subdivision, trees had fallen across several roads and neighbors were busy clearing the debris. One portable garage canopy that had been sheltering two boats lay twisted in woods beside the lot. The two boats were not damaged. Wildwood Point resident Tom House had just arrived from out of town, and had not yet made it to his house. "My scanner has been going crazy with calls coming from Northern Cove," He said. "There must be quite a bit of damage over there. I hope my power is on when I get home."
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