Gray Sky Event: Tornadoes in Michigan
The barrage of stormy weather continued to stretch across the U.S. with at least three tornadoes touching down in Michigan Tuesday evening, some being rated at least an EF-2. By Wednesday afternoon, an estimated 27,000 homes and businesses were without power. One tornado touched down in Portage, another in Union City, and in Branch County and Centreville. A third in Berrien and Cass counties. Many homes were destroyed or damaged with the hardest hit area being Portage.
Our Gray Sky team was able to activate safely Wednesday afternoon to begin aerial imagery collection of the impacted area which was available less than 14 hours after wheels down from our aircraft. The high-resolution oblique and ortho imagery shows widespread devastation and the erratic nature of a tornado, where one home could be left standing and the two or three next to it completed destroyed.
The gallery below shows a brief glimpse of damage suffered by this community and what it will take to rebuild homes and restore services to the area. This imagery helps our insurer members proactively reach out to impacted customers to get them on the road to recovery as quickly as possible.