Manahan Road Tornado

Kathleen O’Connor

They were only calling for a heavy rain on Friday night, August 4, 2017, but what they got in the Deerfield Valley was nearly deadly. According to the Potomac Edison line worker who talked with Dicky Manahan on Saturday morning, August 5, it started in Hagerstown with a high-pressure system about 100 feet up that traveled a 22-mile path, up and over South Mountain, touching down on the high end of Manahan Road at the lower end of the Harbaugh Valley.

“I heard a loud bang,” Dicky’s wife, Patty, said. “Dicky slept through it, but I couldn’t sleep. I heard someone’s grill blowing away.” The power went out. Early the next morning, Dicky and Patty went out in the truck to check on the cows, because they had not come in. One calf was missing.

That was when Dicky saw his field corn with a large swath flattened by the tornado. If his crop was destroyed, how was he going to feed his cows? Would his insurance cover the crop loss?

They began to survey the damage. Not only was the corn down, but a 200-foot-wide hole had also been carved out of the forest on his land, above the house and cornfield, with huge trees down in every direction.

“That hole in the forest will be there the rest of my life and probably my great grandchildren’s lives,” Dicky said, pointing out the distant trees on the other side of the hole. “It must have lifted up as the land went down the valley. That might be why it didn’t do more damage, but took the tops of the trees as it went forward.”

Among the trees down was one that nearly fell on his neighbor’s house, and two that fell on his sawmill, breaking all the trusses in the roof. All that kept the roof from collapsing on his Cyclo Air 800 corn planter was the stack of skids that reached up to the rafters. “I have to get the corn planter out of there before the roof collapses,” Dicky warned.

The sweet corn was down, too. Patty and Dicky had just spent the better part of Friday loading up at least six feedbags full of sweet corn for the Thurmont Farmer’s Market Saturday morning, storing them in a neighbor’s cooler. The money, tables, and signage were ready to go, but with all the devastation and power outage Saturday morning, they couldn’t get the corn to market, and it would never keep another week until the next market. “All that work, and we couldn’t sell any of it,” Patty shared. So they have generously been giving it away to their neighbors.

Their neighbors down Manahan Road, Mike and Denise Dujardin, heard two loud whines and bangs in the middle of the storm. As soon as it appeared safe, around 4:00 in the morning, they, and their daughter Jennifer, went out with flashlights to survey the thicket of trees that were down in the woods, very near their house. Many of them were snapped off about 20 feet up. “As soon as we heard about the damage at Dicky’s, we went up to see how we could help,” Denise said. “He was very shaken and crying. I could hardly bear watching it,” she said with much feeling.

Back on the farm, surveying the loss of forest, crop, calf, and barn, Dicky was devastated. He kept trying to call the insurance, but had not yet heard back about what might be covered. “He cried all night,” Patty told me.

However, Sunday morning, they took a deep breath and counted their blessings, sharing and praying with friends and neighbors at the Deerfield United Methodist Church. No one was hurt, and not a shingle was off a roof anywhere in the valley. What’s more, although the Catoctin Mountain Park Owen’s Creek Campground was full up Friday night and many trees blocked the Foxville–Deerfield Road past the entrance, no campers were hurt, and the Catoctin Mountain Park rangers had cleared the roads.

Farther down Manahan Road, Louise Delauter and another neighbor had large pine trees down; but, thankfully, Louise’s nearly 10-foot circumference silver maple was not damaged. Although a tree had fallen on another neighbor’s car, he was not hurt.

To multiply blessings, as the sun came out on Sunday, the calf came home and the corn began to stand up again! “He must have gotten tangled in the downed trees and took a while to find his way out,” Dicky explained. “I believe the corn will be alright.”

Thanks be to God, all turned out well, despite the sawmill barn damage. “Some of us have been considering how we can have a barn-raising for Dicky and Patty,” neighbor, Denise, hinted. “He does so much for all of us, mowing and plowing snow and all…”

Surely, this is a sign of a community that cares and really means it.

Dicky Manahan points out the 200-foot-wide hole in the forest on his land after the tornado came through on August 4, 2017.

Among the trees down, two trees fell on Dicky’s sawmill, breaking all of the trusses in the roof.