Storage facility property manager highlights the importance of disaster response after being in a tornado impact zone
HUNTLEY — Resident and StorSafe of Huntley North (11200 Kiley Drive) Property Manager Christine “Chris” Engels never imagined in her 22 years of living in the community, that she would ever witness a tornado let alone be in the direct path of one.
As many may recall on July 12, a severe weather alert was issued for Huntley and other nearby residential areas, however, none could have predicted that certain locations would be impacted by an EF-1 tornado, later confirmed by the National Weather Service.
This was the case for Engels who was working alone on the night of the storm.
“I heard about the tornado coming from a customer, actually. So, we have a customer that would normally have equipment pickup for a youth football program here in Huntley and they had canceled their pickup. We had one of their parents come not having gotten the email saying that they had canceled the pickup,” Engels explained.
She continued, “So, I reached out to them directly and said, ‘Are you guys having your equipment pickup tonight,’ and he said, ‘No. We canceled it due to the tornado coming,’ and [I] did the, ‘There’s a tornado coming,’ because I didn’t know anything about it.”
Engels recalls that it was approximately 5:30 p.m. when she took notice of the darkening sky and decided to gather her belongings while completing her end-of-the-night procedures. It was then that alarms and tornado sirens started to go off.
“I was like, ‘Okay, this is serious.’ I grabbed all of my stuff. I looked at my computer questioning, ‘Should I punch out? Should I turn it off,’ and I’m like, ‘No. Just go straight to the bathroom,’ which is where I hunkered down through the storm,” stated Engels. “[I] went in there and literally what felt like a half hour or 15 minutes was probably 30 seconds of it just coming very quickly and hitting. When they say it sounds like a train coming through with the rattling of the train tracks and everything, that is exactly what it sounded like.”
After exiting the bathroom, Engels encountered tree branches laying throughout the hallway followed by a missing roof on a section of the building.
Many would have headed home after such an event, but instead, Engels jumped into action, initiating StorSafe’s disaster recovery response.
Having reached out to her managers, Engels next surveyed the area to assess the extent of the damage on the property, which included sections of missing roof, doors that had been ripped out from storage units, as well as some water damage.
“Luckily, the personal belongings that are in the units are covered under insurance that we can provide to the customer or they can use their own homeowner’s insurance to cover their personal belongings. Luckily, most of our customers did purchase the insurance that we offer and they have a $0 deductible,” said Engels. “Most of the customers that had water damage, it wasn’t significant, thank goodness. Most of our customers pretty much had decided [they’re] not going to file a claim.”
Engels’ lightning-fast response ensured that the StorSafe building was watertight within eight hours and enabled customers to be contacted within two hours of the tornado having passed through the area.
“We did what we could for those customers where we credited them some rent because they went through something. Moving all of their stuff was really difficult and we did what we could monetarily to help them a little bit ease that burden of having to move their stuff to another unit, which could potentially be in another building depending on what units we have available for them to move into,” explained Engels. “As far as I know, we had no items that actually blew out of units that we’ve been told.”
As for the storage facility itself, Engels stated that it’s still a work in progress.
“We’ve been able to put a temporary roof over and a tarp system where the roof disappeared. We’re in negotiations to redo roofing on quite a bit if not all of the building from what I hear,” she said. “Not only did doors get blown off, you’ve got, you know, some cracks in different areas. There’s one section where there’s a beam that disconnected from the floor. So, it really just pushed that beam. It was screwed into the cement and [the tornado] just pulled it right off the screws and the cement. So, there are different things like that.”
Engels expressed that she was glad no one was hurt and while the facility is still assessing the extent of the damage, Engels and StorSafe demonstrated the importance of having an effective disaster recovery response to lessen the burden on customers during such a stressful time.
