UNION COUNTY, Pa. — On arguably its busiest day of the year, this fireworks business along Route 15 near Lewisburg found itself in the middle of the path of a tornado.
"Nope, can't make it up. I never thought it, my buddy and I we've been through a lot together in our lives, and he said, 'Now we survived a tornado together.' So here we are," said Richard McSwain, Watsontown.
Richard McSwain watches the cleanup take place, but he was inside when this all happened.
"I've been shopping here for years, buying boom booms. And we were here, and a friend of mine and he has a little bit of a medical condition, and he didn't get around very well. And we had a tornado warning on the phone on the way down here, but it calmed right down when we got here. Not really an issue. And then we were in the store about five minutes, and a roof blew off," said McSwain.
A few hundred feet away, the roof of George Retherford's produce stand in the Silver Moon Flea Market parking lot collapsed.
George says he and his girlfriend didn't have time to take cover, "I can't even describe. I don't know how fast was coming. I mean, you could hear it when it came through at us. I mean, I knew what was gonna happen. I just held on to her and turned our back away from the storm and prayed for the best. And now and it all. It was amazing. It was just a miracle."
Considering all of these businesses were open at the time the tornado came through, both of the folks that work at the fireworks stand and the vendors up at the flea market tell Newswatch 16 it is very lucky no lives were lost.
"We're blessed. We're absolutely blessed. I feel very fortunate," said McSwain.
Now, it's time to clean up and rebuild.
"There's a lot of volunteers here that are vendors. Like I said, it's a family here. We considered our Silver Moon family, you know," said Steve Hunter, South Williamsport.
"Oh, I'm going to be open next Sunday. Oh, we will be open regardless; oh yes," said Retherford.
Destroyed fireworks stands, and bent flag poles were just some of the aftermath.
Not what you want just before the Fourth of July and only a fraction of the damage in Union County after at least one tornado ripped through the Lewisburg area and beyond.
"In the western part of the county where the first notification that they had seen something, whether it was a funnel cloud or the storm come through, we had several buildings. We had a Chicken Barn that the roof came off and kind of collapsed," said Michelle Dietrich, Union County Emergency Management Director.
In Millmont, you can see that roof ripped right off and a silo missing part of its roof on the same farm.
Cleanup is also underway in a neighborhood near Mifflinburg where Roger Leitzel is dealing with some damage after an EF-1 tornado briefly touched down, according to the National Weather Service.
"All of my skirting was going along underneath, it's all blown in. And the shingles on the shed was broken off. So that's all about all I had," said Leitzel.
Members of the National Weather Service from State College are in Union County to assess the damage, and although they haven't determined yet what type of tornado came through here, we do know it was strong enough to topple a tree in this West Buffalo Township backyard.
"We go through all the damage to determine what caused that, so things like a tornado, straight-line winds, downburst and then assess the damage that's assessed," explained Jonathan Guseman, the morning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in State College. "We go ahead and sign an estimate of wind speed on that,"
Whatever caused this damage in Jodi Camp's yard, she says it was loud.
"We were watching the Phillies game taking a nap, and it sounded like thunder. The first time it woke us up, and the second time it was louder, and we jumped up," said Camp.