The Filkins-Broadwell Tornado
Click all photographs for larger copies

Moving progressively eastwards through the village, the damage started becoming more and more severe. Attached to the old school showed on the previous page, was a house which took the full impact of the tornado. The damage path then continues across the main road, through another wooded area and garden, before entering open countryside.

Central-eastern Filkins.
Image from www.getmapping.com

 

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After having lunch in the village pub, we left our contact details with the barstaff so that any villagers who wished to contact us with information could do so. After receiving a telephone call, we met up with a lady who owned the old school house, standing adjacent to the village nursery. Her story of the tornado demonstates the biggest loss of all, but also perhaps the most fortunate.

The house owner explained how she was downstairs in the kitchen, as very large hailstones began to fall from a very black sky. Her children were upstairs in the loft room, playing with their computer games. She went on to describe how, all of a sudden, there was a noise that sounded like the numerous low flying jets that go over the village daily, but this was altogether louder. The next second, the whole house shook and there was the sound of smashing, cracking and exploding. As she looked out of the window, she saw tiles and huge stone blocks falling from the roof, smashing onto the driveway, and also onto her car. The next second, the garden shed began rolling across the yard, with all the bikes and tools inside, before it suddenly fell into pieces. On hearing cries from upstairs, she ran to the aid of her children. As she went to open the small roof door into the loft conversion, she suddenly realised there was no roof at all! Above where the children were playing, a huge area of roof had simply disappeared, and she could see the dark clouds above.

After the winds passed, the whole family went outside to investigate the wind damage. To their horror, the majority of the roof was stripped of tiles. Most of the tiles had fallen in the yard, badly damaging her car and smashing windows. The largest hole in the roof, above where her children were playing, was caused by the toppling of a chimney. Miraculously, this chimney managed to skirt across the roof before plunging off the edge of the house - her children were unspeakably lucky! As well as the damage to the house, her car had scratches and dents on almost every panel, and had lost its side and rear windows. Several trees in the garden were also completely destroyed.

The house was visited by firefighters shortly after the tornado had passed, and was immediately deemed unfit for habitation. The whole family is now seeking shelter with relatives. We were given permission to enter the unsafe site.

This image was kindly supplied to us by the owner of the house. It was taken mere minutes after the tornado had passed, a shows the immense damage to her car, both in terms of total scratching to the bodywork, and also the smashing of numerous windows.

Also supplied by the property owner, this image was taken the morning after the tornado, and clearly shows the damage to much of the property's roofing, and the absence of the chimney stack on the right-hand end of the roof.

Taken by us, from the road just to the south-east, the school house has tarpaulin across most of the roof, both this side and on the opposite side, where slate and roofing material were removed. Note also the large chunk of missing Cotswold stone masonry at the top of the gable end at the front of the house.

The lawn at the front of the house is littered with huge chunks of Cotswold stone, many over two foot long by over a foot thick. These stones would be too heavy to lift by hand, and yet they were ripped effortlessly from the front gable end of the house. Note also the sheets of roof-lead and fallen trees in the garden.

The side door of the house has been blasted with soil and dirt, a sure sign that conditions were
fairly windy for a time in the back yard!

This used to be a shed, a lean-to, and a fairly large tree.

A collection of slates, lead and guttering has been gathered at the front of the house. However, as images will show later, there was some roofing material that "got away".

The car has been cleaned and polished up since the tornado, and the windows have been replaced. However, there is nothing that can be done for the scratching, potting and denting all over the bodywork, as objects were slammed against it by the tornadic winds.

**Addition - 21/04/04**

Next door to the school house, another home and property was badly damaged to the point where the residents had to move out. We were unable to see this damage during our visit to Filkins, but the resident kindly e-mailed us with his account of the tornado, as well as the images of the damage it caused. Mr E. Baxendale described how he and his family were indeed very lucky, as they entered their house mere minutes before the tornado struck:

"Our house was directly hit by the tornado, being next door to the nursery school. We had just walked in with our 10-week-old daughter literally 5 minutes before. I watched the tornado out of my living room window (stupidly) as the whole place exploded around me! It brought down everything; gates were torn backwards through their hinges & both big trees in our garden were felled. The tornado wrote off my car, and damaged the roof on the house which would have been much worse if not concreted between tiles. As an example of how localized it was, it tore up a tree and yet only 3 yards away it left a plastic free-standing clothes line in exactly the same position...

If we had been outside 5 mins later none of us would have had a chance!"

Mr Baxendale kindly sent us the following images, taken both minutes after the tornado had passed and also during the clean-up the following day:

Many large holes are torn in the roof of this neighbouring house as slates are ripped off by the tornado.

Another vehicular victim of the tornado: with severe damage to the side and the roof caused by an uprooted tree, this car is deemed a write-off.

The eery twilight of clear skies just an hour after the tornado had passed, and the residents had already begun to survey and remove the damage.

The next morning, and the old school house can be clearly seen in the background with its badly damaged roof and masonery. A tree in the property has been toppled into the neighbouring garden.

The same tree from a different angle. Mixed up in the tree is the remains of a garden shed and lean-to from the neighbouring school house grounds.

Many thanks to Mr. Baxendale for sharing these images and accounts with us.

** End of addition **

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Once the tornado had finished with the school house and neighbouring property, it travelled eastwards across the main road, and into a small copse of young trees. Some of the trees received cosmetic damage, although a few were toppled completely. It's worth remembering that these young trees would have more flexibility in the wind, thus absorbing some of the energy.

However, the vortex did destroy a number of slightly older trees, both within and bordering another property on the eastern side of the road. The following images relate to area 9, as shown on the aerial photograph above.

Looking eastwards, many of the trees in this garden were uprooted or badly damaged, most falling in a north-easterly direction.

Once again, there was evidence of flattened vegetation where the flanks of the vortex appeared to be, although once again this could simply be circumstantial evidence.

We spoke to the residents of the damaged school building, who told us that many of the
slates removed from their roof were found in fields opposite, many digging as much as six inches (15cm) into the ground. We found this slate over 300 yards from the damaged roof (which can be seen under the blue tarpaulins in the distance).

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