ARBUTUS, Md. — It uprooted trees, snapped branches, brought down power lines, and threatened to send a utility pole crashing into somebody's home.
"We did evacuate the residents that were inside and everybody is safe at this time. This is something you don't see a lot in a small community like Arbutus, but it can happen anytime, anywhere," said Grant Vaughan with the Lansdowne Volunteer Fire Department.
There were tornado warnings all across Maryland Wednesday night, but only some communities actually saw a tornado.
Arbutus was one of them.
"It was a little surreal because we're watching the news and then it hits you like, that's our area, that's behind our house. 695,95, and they're telling us to get in the basement," said Koren Melfi of Arbutus, "I was just sitting in my living room and my sister's going up and down the stairs yelling, 'it's a tornado, it's a tornado!' And I was like, 'I think it'll be fine.'"
One woman told WMAR she wasn't home during the storm, but a photo from her neighborhood prepared her for the damage she would come home to later.
"We saw our backyard tree was in shambles. We park in our backyard so luckily no branches or anything hit our cars. It didn't hit our house. And then our tree out front luckily went horizontal to our house rather than right on top of it," she said.
Still - a lot to clean up.
"You never see this. I mean, we have storms, we have transformers that get blown out up there at UMBC, but nothing like this. I've never experienced a tornado in Maryland," said Rhiannon White of Arbutus.
