Darren Higgins, owner of Lions Den Pizza in Marshall, IL, spotted an overnight tornado on his restaurant’s security camera.
This after noticing his lion, the town’s mascot, was out of place.
“I have the camera on the lion at all times,” he explained. “And once we saw that move we rewound the video and watched it.”
The tornado ran through town around 2:30 am, ripping up the restaurant’s awning and tearing though picnic tables and a grill.
But miraculously, no damage was done to the restaurant itself.
“Everything can be replaced,” Higgins said. “Thank goodness nobody was hurt, we was all blessed that way so.”
Around six am, Marshall Pool Manager Misty Wieland arrived on the scene of a disaster.
“Our chairs were all out. A lot were out in the parking lot,” she explained. “Our fence over here was completely down.”
But chairs in the water weren’t the extent of the storm damage.
“The swim team shed hit the light poll that is right there,” she said. “And luckily the light poll stopped it or it probably would’ve taken down part of our slide or ended up in the pool itself.”
Wieland says the swim shed will have to be replaced, but the pool should be open Monday.
And Higgins is working to make sure his restaurant will be open on Tuesday for hungry customers.
Both can agree, the storm was a shock to the community.
“Watching that video and seeing the funnel cloud, never seen anything like that,” said Higgins.
“The whole town on that side, I haven’t even gotten a look,” said Wieland. “But I heard a lot of our town got hit pretty hard so I think we were kinda lucky.”
