Emergency crews on the scene after a tornado touched down in the Pine St./Oak St. area of Milton near Wakefield Place. Photo courtesy of Andrea Pettigrew of Milton.
As we’re all well aware, a tornado touched down briefly in ‘Old’ Milton on the evening of Thursday, August 20th, 2009. It was the first reported tornado in Milton in over 150 years, which explains why it was such a big deal around these parts.
As I watched the violent sheets of rain and the wind bending over my trees and shrubs at the MiltonSearch.com offices, I remember thinking “somewhere there’s gotta be a tornado touching down.”
Little did I know that this was indeed the case, although it was a little closer than I expected.
We covered the incident on our site the day after and were the first local media outlet to post photos of the aftermath. This led to MiltonSearch.com’s most successful day (August 21, 2009) and week of traffic ever as we ranked #1 on Google for users searching for info and photos of the tornado.
We asked for visitors to send us their pictures and to submit their stories of the storm, the damage and of course, the cleanup efforts. Andrea Pettigrew of Oak St., who lives right beside Wakefield Place, was the first to respond.
Many of the photos she sent us that were taken during the storm, we didn’t post in our photo gallery, although they were very “artistic.” However, she also sent us a bunch of pictures of the damage to her house and the surrounding area, and also several of the various cleanup crews.
Andrea’s full gallery of photos can be found here. Below are excerpts of her account of the incident, which again, thankfully didn’t result in any serious injuries.
My name is Andrea and I live on Oak St. in Milton. The tree that took out part of the roof off the dental office on Wakefield landed on my roof. I can give you further details if you wish as I was taking photos the whole time. Right now am rather tired from all the cleanup. I just moved here on the first of the month and was still in the process of moving and getting settled in.
I wish to thank all of the police, firefighters, town and emergency workers who did such a wonderful job under stressful circumstances and long hours. They were well prepared and very concerned for our safety. They were simply amazing and very kind!
It is very reassuring to know that Milton is so well prepared for the unexpected and I am very grateful for these special people who just showed up and worked without complaint.
My regards to all of you!
Sincerely,
Andrea Pettigrew
Amen. Thanks Andrea! Sorry to hear about your roof and the damage to your home (especially after just moving in) and good luck with the cleanup.
If you would like to share your story and/or photos, feel free to drop us a line at: info@miltonsearch.com or register and create an account so you can upload your own gallery of photos to our Milton photo gallery.
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