By TRACY BELL and MARTY van DUYNE
Published: May 9, 2008

The National Weather Service has confirmed a tornado did touch down in the England Run area of south Stafford on Thursday night, according to Mark Stone, with Stafford County Fire and Rescue.

The weather service estimates the twister to have registered an F1 or F2 on the Fujita Scale, the system in which tornados are measured by their destructiveness.

Some residents who were displaced from their homes are now being allowed to return to get a firsthand look at the damage.

“We don’t have a solid number yet as to how many people we will let go back, but we still believe there are about 20 homes that remain uninhabitable,” said Stone.

Residents whose homes the county deems still dangerous will remain sheltered at T. Benton Gayle Middle School in Stafford County.

Stafford residents Wayne and Judy Basluke were in their bedroom when the storm hit Thursday night. They yelled for their children to quickly get into the basement.

It sounded like a train or a huge roar — something hard to describe, Judy Basluke said.

It hit between 10:25 p.m. and 10:45 p.m., the couple noted. 

The family lives on Limestone Road in the England Run North area of Stafford County — a street with homes that ultimately sustained considerable damage.

When the tornado was over, they ran down the street to check on their neighbors.

Although there haven’t been any deaths or critical injuries, one person, Jeff Leonard, was sent to Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg after his head was cut open from being hit with a chest of drawers during the storm.

His wife and son, Janice and Andrew Leonard, were home with him when he was injured during a roof collapse caused by the storm, and subsequently hit with the furniture.

Along with many families, the Leonards took advantage of the shelter offered at Gayle Middle School.

Fire-rescue officials say about 75 to 100 homes in the area were damaged. Limestone Road, is in particularly bad shape, and much of the damage is south of Lyons Blvd.

In some areas, tops of trees are shorn off. Some homes have the siding torn off their structures, while others have had their windows blown out. There are holes in roofs and in the sides of homes — in some cases passersby can see into the homes, viewing laundry rooms and furniture. 

The damage is sporadic — where one home is badly damaged, its neighbor may have experienced very little. Some homes have wood embedded into the sides of their structures, and debris litters the ground including shards of glass.

When winds pick up, so will the debris and glass, causing another safety issue for local residents.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Cathy Riddle, public information officer for Stafford County, who was on the scene with countless officials from throughout Virginia to assess the damage, including building inspectors from Code Administration, sheriff’s office and fire-rescue officials including Stafford’s Assistant Fire Chief Roger Sutherland.

“It’s still very dangerous,” added Riddle. “If they live in England Run they should go to the shelter.”

At its peak there were about 75 people in the shelter, but it’s reduced to about 18, according to Caroline Camargo, public support director for the Rappahannock chapter of the Red Cross, located in Massaponax.

A Red Cross preassessment damage team walked around to the affected houses Friday, not entering, but simply assessing the outside.

The team lists each home as either destroyed, major, minor, affected or inaccessible in order to figure out what kind of aid each of the families need.

The Red Cross will have a clean-up crew on hand for the weekend. Teams from all over Virginia were also there to lend Stafford officials a helping hand.

Stafford resident Carlos Puentes and his wife Gloria managed to avoid the tornado Thursday night, coming away with little damage to their home.

Their children, Gabriella, 8, and Allison, 4, only wanted to know one thing when the family, for safety’s sake, had to leave the home during the storm for better shelter.

They wanted to know that KoKo, the family’s 1-year-old Yorkshire terrier, would be coming with them.

KoKo, indeed, was allowed to go.

The family, of Foggy Field Lane in the England Run North area, also went to Gayle Middle School for shelter. 

The Stafford County Animal Shelter has kennels set up at the school, where animals are welcome, and continue to be taken in. They may stay at the shelter with their families. 

“The people were real nice there,” said Carlos Puentes. “They brought us coffee and bagels.”

Puentes said that at about 11 p.m. on Thursday night, the local fire department came to homes and told them they had to leave to go to stay in other people’s homes and garages. They walked there and stayed a few hours. Then, a bus came and took them to the shelter at Gayle, he said.

Puentes said that even though his family was lucky, a few of his neighbors sustained damage that was much worse. One car was even lifted on top of another car in a garage, he said.

Tracy Bell is managing editor of the Stafford County Sun. Marty van Duyne often contributes articles to the Sun. Reach them at .