EF-1 tornado impacted Galva Sunday

By CAROL TOWNSEND
For The Prairie News

GALVA – A storm that took down trees here, damaged roofs and buildings and destroyed baseball dugouts on Sunday was part of a line of storms that spawned six tornadoes in Henry County.

The National Weather Service reported Tuesday that the longest tornado of the six in Henry County had a path length of 16.4 miles and impacted Galva. The EF-1 tornado touched down about 1 mile west of Victoria at 8:39 p.m., where it snapped four power poles along Illinois Route 167.

The tornado then proceeded to the northeast, passed through Galva and ended about 3 miles west of Kewanee at about 8:57 p.m. after taking down more trees.

Peak winds were estimated at 100 mph. An EF-1 tornado is the second-weakest on the Fujita Scale, with EF-5 the most damaging.

Galva’s ESDA coordinator Adam Jaquet said the storm mainly hit the southeast and northeast sections of Galva, though a tree was uprooted in the southwest part of town.

Damage was reported across Galva. A fence was knocked down at the Donna Wallentine property as well as damage to a pool on SW 2nd Ave.

About 10 trees were broken at the Galva Cemetery.

The dugouts at one of the ball fields at the Galva Park District were taken down.

A farm building that sits behind Mary’s Family Dining at 1011 SE 2nd St. that is owned by Pete VanDeVelde was heavily damaged, with pieces of metal flying across the highway into property owned by the Big River Resources ethanol plant.

Several metal sheds were destroyed and several houses and garages were damaged from the impact of trees falling on them.