Selectmen opened Soule Road School and Minnechaug Regional High School as emergency shelters.
A Wilbraham resident took the photo while sitting in his car in Wilbraham during Wednesday's storms.WILBRAHAM – With hundreds of downed trees and power lines, roads were not passable after a tornado touched down late Wednesday afternoon.
Selectmen Chairman Patrick J. Brady said he saw roofs off buildings and roof trusses in a subdivision off Tinkham Road.
A newer subdivision on Tinkham Road across from Minnechaug Regional High School had siding ripped off the houses, Brady said.
Traffic had slowed to a halt throughout town as commuters tried to make their way back home.
“We’re declaring a state of emergency” so that police can order motorists to get off the roads, Brady said.
Selectmen opened Soule Road School and Minnechaug Regional High School as emergency shelters.
No homes in town had power. Major intersections at Boston Road and Stony Hill Road and Boston Road and Main Street were without power.
Telephone lines were down, so commuters were not able to reach family members who were at home. Cell phone service throughout the town was extremely spotty.
Most people were not panicking.
During recurring thunderstorms, people were outside photographing huge uprooted trees on Stony Hill Road. Other people were watching the storm from their porches on Main Street. Some people, unable to get down Main Street in their cars, bicycled down the street.
Brady said police had reported minor injuries.
Police and firefighters were going door to door on the southern part of Main Street and Tinkham Road, checking to see if there was anybody with serious injuries.
There was no power in the Village Store after the tornado struck. Rebecca Lamb, an employee, said she sent some Wilbraham & Monson Academy students back to school because the basement was not set up for tornadoes.
Lamb said a neighbor came in and told her she saw the tornado in the sky. One of her fellow employees returned to her home at the corner of Main Street and Tinkham Road and found that there were rooms missing on the back of the house, Lamb said.
“It was good to see emergency crews coming to town from Ludlow and Bondsville,” she said.
Kathy Taylor, 63, of Rochford Drive, said the tornado “sounded like a train.”
“I could feel it coming so I ran down into the basement. I stayed down there. I could hear trees falling and branches hitting the house. And then it was over. It didn’t last very long – probably a few minutes. The severity of it lasted maybe 30 seconds.”
Across the street, James Lasonde, 82, heard a “roar.”
On Longview Drive, 85-year-old Barbara Sweeney “heard a terrible, terrible noise. They say it does sound like a train, and I guess it did sound like a train. It was loud.”
Staff reporter Bill Wells contributed to this report.