A tornado did not touch down on South Main Street in Wallingford on May 15, 2018, but a microburst is to blame for the damage at a historic church built in the mid-1800s.
"We’re just not that part of the country that gets that kind of weather, so you saw the dark sky you knew it was probably something more severe than usual,” said Rev. Kathy Cunliffe from the First Congregational Church.
She remembers well what happened that afternoon almost a year ago.
“Suddenly from the west we could see very dark skies coming,” Cunliffe said.
The senior pastor and five parishioners were preparing for a meeting to discuss the future of their church.
“But then suddenly all of our phones went off because there was a tornado warning that went out as an emergency alert,” Cunliffe recalled.
They took shelter in a basement hallway.
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“Through the door at the end of that hallway we could see everything blowing kind of straight across and knew something bigger was going on out there,” Cunliffe said.
The next day Cunliffe said she noticed the damage caused by the microburst's 100 mph winds.
"A whole bunch of the roof tiles scattered all over the yard in the side memorial garden," she said, "so I just collected a pile of them because wasn’t just one or two, probably 40 or 50.”
Inside the church, a water stain is visible above the balcony. The damage outside is so significant that the entire roof needs to be replaced.
"We were actually kind of surprised," Cunliffe said. "We thought maybe there was just gonna be some sections of repair and the ultimate conclusion was that we needed a whole new roof.”
Tim Keogh, the church's senior trustee, has overseen filing the insurance claim.
"It's taken a while to get to this point but we’re here anyway,” he said.
The price tag for the roof replacement at the church is $289,000, Keogh said.
“A lot of it is in the scaffolding behind me, quite an expense to set this up, its gonna have to go around the building to get to it,” Keogh explained.
The insurance company is covering the entire claim, Keogh said.
“We’re really grateful for that because we have a lot of other work we want to do here,” Cunliffe said.
Work to repair the historic house of worship should take eight to 10 weeks.
The church is planning to raise money in order to repaint the area of the water stain and the entire interior of the sanctuary.
