PLEASANT HILL, Iowa — As Local 5 first shared Monday, a Pleasant Hill family offered shelter to our news crew Friday night when the tornado sirens sounded and they had nowhere to go for safety.
“My ears were getting really full and they’re popping and my 14-year-old and him were both saying well, now that you say something, mine are really ... like you’re going up a mountain and it was to the point that my eardrums were hurting,” Samantha Schminkey said.
Schminkey and Brandon Reese were planning on having a quiet Friday night. That was before the storms broke loose.
"Total chaos," Reese recalled.
Within seconds of their ears popping, Reese and Schminkey said they felt like they were in a movie. They heard the wind screaming. Debris hitting their house. Then, silence.
“I think that was more eerie than anything. It was super loud and then it was like silent and it was pitch black. There was nothing. Our phones were on 8%, we were all freaked out, lost Wi-Fi, lost all connection," Schminkey said.
Their grill, which once stood in their backyard, was thrown into their neighbor's yard across the street. Now it sits in a pile of debris with other scraps from the storm.
Days later, the family is making sense of what happened and assessing the damage caused by the storm.
“We have broken windows, we had an AC unit that flew through the window and busted the whole outside of it, it had shifted our bathroom sink off of the wall," Schminkey said.
They’re currently staying with family.
"Our house ... nobody should be staying in this house because of the debris everywhere so yeah ...I mean, we can't really be here with young children," Schminkey added.
They ended up needing to find a rental car too.
“My car is looking like a total loss, we had a work truck that has been smashed by light poles, his other truck, its back windows broke out," Schminkey said.
It’s a night they won’t forget, including their son Brewer. While only 3 years old and learning how to speak, he was excited to share his side of the story. When asked about what happened that night, he pointed to multiple areas of the room, making big gestures, saying words like "Smash!"
Thankfully the family is not dealing with the aftermath alone. They say they've gotten a lot of help from family and friends, some even taking time off work to pitch in.