People who live in Banning say a powerful storm hit out of nowhere.
“Like a mini tornado is what it felt like,” says Daniele Savard.
“You heard the lightning like I said, you seen a few strikes and then the wind just started blowing and then rain just came down real hard,” says Michael Johnson,
“It was very odd all of a sudden it was over 100 degrees and then my temperature on my vehicle dropped down to 68 degrees and it started raining like monsoons, heavy winds, we saw trees falling over, trees on fire,” says Savard.
Firefighters were kept busy as several trees were struck by lightning and caught fire, one of those trees was in Mary Bass’ front yard, “We heard a loud boom, thunder and then first thing I knew when I looked out the window I seen smoke … I looked a little bit closer the tree was on fire … we feel very lucky … the corner of the house could have caught fire as well,” says Bass.
But the talk of the town is the damage done to Sylvan Park. Giant trees were ripped out by their roots and scattered about like toothpicks, leaving holes so bit, Johnson, who’s over six-feet-tall, crawled inside and disappeared into the void.
“I’ve never seen nothing like this before,” he says as he crawls out.
Despite the destruction all around him, Johnson sees a silver lining, “It’s a good thing there were no children here because they would have got hurt.”
