BLUE RIDGE, Texas — The tornado that struck Blue Ridge in rural Collin County Tuesday morning damaged or destroyed every building on the properties shared by the Reising-Diehl families along FM 545. But the same tornado also showed how quickly a family like theirs jumps into the act of rescuing each other.
The home Donald Reising and his wife have called home for more than 20 years was heavily damaged: much of its roof and the back porch ripped away. Next door a garage/shop that belongs to a son and daughter-in-law took a direct hit. The tools and appliances and boats and pieces of the walls and roof were scattered to the northeast in an adjoining pasture. Sheet metal, insulation and sheets of plywood clung to trees and power lines along FM 545 hundreds of yards away.
And to the west, Reising’s son-in-law and daughter suffered the collapse of a garage with a Camaro inside. Next to that garage debris also hit a 5th wheel trailer that granddaughter Mary Jane Newman called home.
“Me and my husband, we live in the trailer. We actually moved in two days ago,” she said. Parked behind her parent’s home, she took shelter during the tornado in her parent’s bathtub along with her dog.
“Honestly, I didn’t think about going to get in the bathtub. Tornadoes hit all the time. We’re gonna be fine,” she said of the pre-tornado attitude that quickly changed as it approached.
But as much as the tornado tore their homes apart, it also showed how closely knit this extended family is.
“How many people can rely on every single one of their children and grandchildren to drop everything and come help? Not a lot of people, said Mary Jane’s sister Elizabeth Diehl.
“It won’t take too long to get it all cleaned up. Hopefully we can still have a good Christmas because we usually have it here,” Mary Jane Newman said. “So, we’ll have to figure out a new plan for that. I’m just glad we’re all safe.”
“I knew it was coming,” said their grandfather Donald Reising who rode out the tornado inside his home. But he couldn’t hide his emotions when talking about his children and grandchildren.
“Scare you a bit?” I asked him.
“Oh yeah,” he said.
As Reising and his family began salvaging what they could and started temporary repairs on damaged roofs, they learned that the tornado damage that appears to have started on their property extends all the way through the town of Blue Ridge where additional homes were damaged, Blue Ridge High School and Blue Ridge Middle School suffered minor damage too, and trees were snapped and tombstones overturned at the Blue Ridge Cemetery.
“I don’t know what to say,” Donald Reising added as he watched his sons and daughters and grandchildren working together to clean up the tornado damage. “It can wake your spirit up,” he said of the brief but powerful twister.
But he could also celebrate, as he watched his little army get to work, that this momentary crisis also brought them all together.