Brenda Belmudez swept dirt, pine needles and glass shards off a table in the entryway of a home she moved into last month, an almost futile cleaning effort as glass crunched under her shoes.
Two-by-fours were impaled in the wall behind her.
“It’s just overwhelming,” she said. “It’s like a war zone.”
The Belmudez home was one of 36 structures damaged Sunday afternoon when multiple tornadoes tore through Adams, Arapahoe and Elbert counties. No people were injured in either storm, according to authorities in those counties.
The tornado in Bennett touched down at least three times and left 17 buildings, including six homes, with damage, according to Arapahoe County Sheriff’s officials. The storm also damaged Pioneer Solar, an 80 megawatt solar farm, near Bennett in Adams County.
In the Elkhorn Ranch neighborhood in Elbert County, 19 buildings were damaged by a Sunday afternoon tornado, according to the Elizabeth Fire Protection District. The damage ranged from missing roofs and blown-out windows to ripped shingles and siding.
A tornado also touched down near Watkins, but it did not destroy property. The National Weather Service’s Storm Survey Team was assessing damage on Monday, a social media post said. The agency also hoped to determine the tornadoes’ EF ratings by Monday afternoon.
Tornadoes do brutal things.
Brenda Belmudez and her husband, Joey Belmudez believe a workshop at an across-the-street neighbor’s house was picked up by the funnel cloud and slammed into the front of their house. A 2011 Chevy Tahoe’s front windshield looked like it had been blasted by a shotgun. Large picture windows were gone. Inside, the family’s clothes, artwork and even change from a coin jar were scattered on the floors. The roof appeared to be lifted off the joists.
The couple had been in Alabama for a family member’s graduation when a neighbor called to tell them a tornado had struck the home. They booked the first flight out of Birmingham on Monday morning and landed at Denver International Airport at 8 a.m., Monday. They drove straight home.
“Devastation,” Joey Belmudez said about their first impression upon pulling into the driveway.
The couple had left their two mastiffs, Drago and Lita, at home with a pet sitter. She had left to run errands when the tornado tore through the neighborhood. The dogs, in a panic, leaped through a broken window. The pet sitter, the Belmudezes’ family still in Colorado and neighbors searched for the dogs, sharing their pictures in neighborhood chats. By 11:30 p.m. Sunday, both dogs were found, uninjured.
The Belmudezes are from Colorado and decided to move back home from Alabama. They moved into their new house on April 18, Joey Belmudez said.
Joey Belmudez said tornadoes were rare when he was growing up and it made news if anyone saw a funnel cloud whether or not it touched down.
In Alabama, tornadoes were a routine threat.
“We figured when we moved back we wouldn’t have to worry about tornadoes anymore, “ Joey Belmudez said. “And here we are.
“It’s not supposed to happen in Colorado.”
Four workers on Monday afternoon lifted the frame of what once was a barn on Greg Torfin’s property in the Elkhorn Ranch subdivision and hauled it to a trash bin, newly parked in the driveway.
“This was a pole barn, built on six-by-six poles,” Torfin said. “They’re all snapped off at the base. This wasn’t just wind.”
Torfin was still assessing the damage Monday afternoon. He already knows the second floor of his home is uninhabitable. The tornado’s force moved it a couple of inches.
The Torfin family had traveled to California for a vacation on Friday. They were at a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game when the Elbert County Sheriff’s Office called about the storm damage.
Torfin and his wife flew home immediately. The others stayed in California, he said.
His son’s gray Toyota Tundra pickup, which had been parked in the barn, had a chunk of the roof on its hood and the windshield was smashed.
“He said, ‘Can I park my truck in your barn to protect it from hail?’” Torfin said with a laugh.
While the damage will take months to repair, Torfin said he was thankful that no one in the neighborhood was hurt.
Then he went back to work clearing soggy insulation and busted plywood from the yard as dark clouds gathered on the horizon, bringing the next May storm.
The tornado in Bennett hit hard and fast, said Vikki Katchen, a 68-year-old fitness instructor at the town recreation center whose home was heavily damaged during the Sunday storm.
“It was horrifying. … We lost everything we own,” she said.
The tornado that passed over Katchen’s property also leveled her barn and totaled the five cars parked inside of it, which she had moved into the barn just before the storm hit out of fear they’d be damaged by hail. A roommate stored multiple classic cars in the barn. All were destroyed, she said.
She said she’s still missing a truck, which seems to have blown away in the tornado. Katchen searched for her dogs and chickens after the tornado tore their coops and pens, but she had reunited with most of them Monday. Two chickens are still missing.
Katchen and her roommate took shelter during the tornado by lying on the floor in the corner of a bedroom. The windows shattered under the pressure, showering the two with glass.
They purchased the then-foreclosed home near the intersection of East 72nd Avenue and Provost Road north of Bennett in 2001 and have lived there since, Katchen said.
”Everything we’ve worked for the last 25 years is gone, destroyed in two minutes,” Katchen said.
For now, Katchen is living in a mobile home parked on the edge of the wreckage, loaned to her by a close friend. Insulation, shrapnel and other debris are strewn across the property and roadside.
Other neighbors are sharing water, cars and other necessities, she said.
“Everyone is trying to help, and I don’t even know what to tell them to do because I don’t know where to start,” she said.
Just a few blocks over, two siblings were working Monday to clean their property along East 64th Avenue.
Rob Anderson and Becky Johnson have lived in their house for more than 47 years and said they’ve never had a tornado come close to hitting them.
”We’ve had some bad wind storms and bad dirt storms, but nothing like this,” Johnson said.
Her brother, Anderson, said he was securing the house and their horses ahead of the storm on Sunday when he saw a tornado looming on the horizon.
Johnson sheltered in the basement, but Anderson stayed in the living room to watch. Suddenly, it hit.
“It was terrifying,” Johnson said. “I kept yelling for him after I heard a big boom and glass shattering, but I couldn’t hear him. I had no idea what I was going to find upstairs.”
Anderson escaped with no injuries beyond shaken nerves.
At least seven trees were uprooted, two sheds were destroyed and three horse trailers were thrown around, he said.
“Everything’s just a mess,” Anderson said, gesturing to the warped horse trailers and piles of debris outside the still-standing barn. “Just a couple of minutes and it did all this.”
Anderson raises race horses and had planned to take three to Iowa next week. He said it’s unclear if that trip is still possible without his equipment.
The recreation center was open to those who needed shelter Sunday night, but Bennett Park & Recreation District Director Leila Schaub said no one used it. Those impacted by the tornadoes largely stayed with friends and family or hauled generators out to their powerless homes.
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