FOX CITIES — People are doing what they can to clean up the historic Doty Island Neighborhood after Monday's tornado.
“We heard everything breaking and rattling, and we were like, the tornado is hitting our house, what the heck," Mary Pat Franke said.
Franke was at her mother-in-law's house on Doty Island when the tornado hit.
“Bam, all the windows blew in; we could hear glass shattering; we could hear wind rattling everything in the house," she said. “There’s water damage because rain came in through all the windows.
Winds blew a pontoon from the water and hit Franke's mother-in-law's house.
"I was like, who’s boat is that? That’s not our boat," she said.
See some more of the damage here:
It wasn't the only boat out of place. The public dock nearby was nearly completely destroyed.
Bill Staffeld's sailboat was pushed onto the shoreline by the winds. Staffeld said he's now unable to move the boat.
“Only on TV," he said when asked if he'd witnessed a storm like this before. "You see this kind of stuff on national news, and you feel sorry for those people, and you thank god that it never happened in your neighborhood.”
More than power lines, windows and trees, Doty Island lost some of its historic landmarks.
“Part of what’s so special about Doty Island is the historic nature of where we live," long-time resident Diane MacDonald said. "To see all the devastation, to see the caboose overturned, the playground and the pickleball courts and Isle of Valor, is huge- I mean it’s gone. To see all of that devastation has been awful."
MacDonald has lived on Doty Island more than 20 years.
“I'm in shock; I can’t believe that in minutes our neighborhood completely changed," she said.
She’s mourning the neighborhood she knew, while thanking the neighbors she has.
“We’re making it through; I’m just glad that my family and friends, everybody, is okay," she said.
