‘The whole house shook': Loxahatchee community comes together for tornado cleanup

Cleanup efforts entered their second day for many in the Loxahatchee area of Palm Beach County, where tornadoes touched down and left a distinct path of destruction.

Melody Russell, whose home was hit by a tornado, said it happened just after they finished putting shutters up on the entire house. 

“The whole house was shaking, and I was screaming so I don’t remember the sound, but my family says it was very loud, like a train,” Russell said. 

She said all of a sudden, it stopped, and that’s when her husband ran outside. 

He took video of the twister as it left their property. 

“Oh my gosh, we just got hit by a tornado,” he says in the footage, as he pans the camera to show trees left bare and debris scattered around. 

No deaths have been reported in Palm Beach County, official said.  

In a corner of a nearby park, a truck landed after sheriff’s deputies said it was blocks away and picked up by the twister. 

In the Avenir Development, it was a similar scene. 

Another truck tossed down the street came to a rest there on its side. 

“It somehow ended up on the other side of the street. It’s amazing, the power,” Brianne DeSellier, whose own home was hit by a tornado, said. 

Her daughter Brinley, who is nearly a year old, made the best of it. 

“It was scary. Funny enough, she thought it was hilarious,” DeSellier said “We were in the closet under the stairs, and we were kind of like, panicking because we could hear it all, and she’s like laughing. She thought it was hilarious.”

 The cleanup has become a community effort thanks to neighbors like Rachel Skirkanich. 

“I just lended out my generator to a family. I’m going around handing out water. I just want to help as much as I can,” she said. 

Others have shown up to clean debris, bring food and lend a hand. 

“The outpouring of love was just so amazing. Everybody’s stuff is like now where it needs to be to be picked up, and the cleanup was just amazing,” Russell said.