Along twister-torn streets in Buford, bonds tighten

Moments later, it happened.

One of nature’s most capricious forces, a tornado, came to life in the backyards of Kirkstone. Its 130-mph winds snapped two red oaks as easily as a child would break twigs. It yanked a toilet out of a bathroom floor, lifted an entire bedroom and dumped it on a garage floor. It stormed for a quarter-mile across Kirkstone, doing an estimated $5 million in damage to 50 homes before dissipating as quickly as it formed.

Somehow, no one was hurt, not even a dog or cat. And for all its destruction, the tornado left something else behind, too. It brought people together in the face of wind and rain. They connected with hugs and tears and pizza. They learned that a tornado might demolish a house, but it cannot defeat love or the human spirit.

A bump and a prayer

Bus 1, big and yellow, lumbered onto Old Peachtree Road, heading west. Matthew Lucia, 11, sat near the rear with classmate Garrett McGuire, 10. The weather, the fifth-graders agreed, was crummy.

Then — Bump! — something hit the bus. Matthew and Garrett spun in their seats just in time to see something big and brown tumble off the vehicle’s rear. Later, they’d agree it was a piece of a house.

That was creepy, but nothing like the sight that greeted them at Kirkstone’s entrance off Gravel Springs Road. The kids took it in with wide-eyed stares: a shattered hardwood festooned with tattered insulation, roof shingles spattered across the landscape, police cars’ emergency lights flashing blue in the gloom.

Driver Emily Thomas stopped the bus. Clearly, something bad had just occurred. What if they had left school on time?

The little kids at the front of the bus began crying. Some of the older ones did, too. Matthew decided to pray. He sent a quiet message to the Almighty: Please, please protect the people he loved.

Thomas turned in her seat. “Everything’s fine,” she reassured the children. Then she wheeled the bus around and dialed the school: She was bringing the kids back.

On the other end, Principal Marian Hicks said OK.

Hicks paused to think, then got to work. She flipped on the school intercom. “I need all of our staff in the building to please touch base at the front office,” she said. Everyone — teachers, aides, custodians — responded.

She dispatched some to the school’s media center, where staffers found a DVD of “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” Others dug up board games. Office workers began calling parents of the Kirkstone kids. Hicks dialed a Domino’s in Dacula and ordered a dozen pizzas.

When the bus arrived, it was still raining. The 30 kids aboard piled out. Some wept, most just looked scared. Principal Hicks managed a big smile as teachers bent to welcome their charges back.

“Everything’s fine,” she told them. “Your parents are on the way.”

Then she delivered the really good news: Pizza was coming! The kids cheered.

The youngsters trooped to the media center, flopping on beanbag chairs, sprawling on the floor. A few even dug in their bookbags and began doing homework.

Hicks felt a surge of love, and relief: The kids — her kids — would be OK.

‘Did you hear that?’

Colleen Hall and Nicole Canganelli were at Nicole’s house on Dunleigh Place in Kirkstone as a gray afternoon began to turn black. They sat in an unused bedroom that had been Nicole’s older sister’s before she went off to college.

Colleen, 17, noticed a change in the rain. It had been steady, but suddenly increased its tempo. So had the wind. She mentioned it to her best friend, 14.

“Did you hear that?” she asked.

“We have hurricane winds,” Nicole said.

Nicole tried the light switch, flicking it a couple of times. Nothing. They were in the dark.

Colleen reached for her cell phone and called her mother, Amy Hall, an accountant in Norcross. “Mom,” she said, “it looks like a tornado!”

The wind seemed to come alive. They felt it as much as heard it, a wind like none before in their lives, a wind that reached into homes and took what it wanted. The stunned girls sat in the dark and watched the window shake as if something was trying to get in. The house shook, swayed. They shrieked and held each other. A tree flew past.

Like a house of cards

Tami O’Connor loved her living room. The Christmas tree, erected the previous weekend, twinkled. The glow illuminated the ceramic figurines of the wise men and the baby Jesus on the fireplace mantel. Her oldest and youngest children lounged in the room, too. The peaceful moment was a marked contrast to the wet tumult outside.

Was that thunder? O’Connor listened. A clap shook the air outside her home on Bancroft Way. Yes, thunder, she thought.

It was, she’d decide later, the tornado demanding entrance.

Crack! Lumber shrieked and broke apart behind the walls. The Christmas tree went dark. The furniture shook.

Boom! The living room’s exterior wall, two stories tall, pulled away and fell into the yard. It toppled as neatly as if the house were made of cards. O’Connor saw tree branches and patio furniture sail into the darkness.

The wind reached in and snatched at the Christmas tree. It stole books and pictures from the walls. O’Connor screamed and grabbed her children, 16-year-old Jordyn and 5-year-old Cade. The wind would not get them.

Roar of a train

Something must be on TV. Savannah Viar plopped down in an overstuffed chair and scanned the channels. The images passed by in a colorful blur on the big screen over the fireplace. The 18-year-old looked at her cell phone and remembered the text her dad had sent earlier that day: Tornado watch. But dad was always sending her texts about various calamities; she hadn’t paid much attention to this one.

She couldn’t ignore the wind, though. It had been whooping around the eaves all afternoon, a distraction. But then it changed. It sounded like ...

It’s true, she thought. A tornado does sound like a train.

And this train was headed her way. Savannah recalled some long-ago emergency drill. She ran down the hall to a bathroom. She got on her knees in the tub. She called her dad.

Randy Viar answered at his engineering job in Lilburn. The signal from his daughter’s phone was weak, breaking apart, but he heard enough to scare any father: tornado, bathroom, wind. Then the call was gone.

His phone rang again. Viar’s home-alarm company was on the line. They’d received an alarm at his home, the man said — a fire alarm. Viar ran for his truck.

In the tub, Savannah prayed — for herself, for her family, for everyone she loved.

Small miracles

The tornado roared for three minutes, then wrapped itself in dusk’s growing mist. With a last gust and a final rattle of windows, it vanished.

Colleen and Nicole peered outside, then reached for the phone. They called Colleen’s mom again, nearly breathless. “Mom,” Colleen told her horrified mother, “a tornado went through the neighborhood!” Amy Hall headed for her car.

Tami O’Connor pushed back her hair and took a quick inventory: The kids were OK. The house was still standing. And there, on the mantel, sat her manger figurines, symbols of her faith. Untouched.

Next door, Savannah climbed out of the bathtub. She stepped outside just as a neighbor drove slowly past. She stopped her car and opened the door wide. Savannah jumped in. O’Connor’s oldest daughter, Jordyn, ran across the yard and joined her. The girls wrapped their arms around each and shook. And still the rain fell.

The next day, under a weak sun, the residents of Kirkstone took a personal and physical count of the storm’s impact. They shook hands, assessed the damage and agreed that, yes, things could have been a lot worse.

Roofers arrived nearly as quickly as the storm had, hammering tarps into place until more permanent repairs could be made. Moving and storage crews filled trucks with the contents of demolished bedrooms and dens. Insurance adjusters carrying cameras came behind them, recording the damage for the claims that will be filed. By Thursday afternoon, Dumpsters lined some streets, their contents a reminder that nothing is permanent.

Nothing, perhaps, but the human spirit. The folks whom the storm hit say they will rebuild.

The O’Connors love their home and the memories it contains. The Lucia family is staying, too. Savannah Viar is remaining until she goes away to college. Colleen and Nicole say they are best friends for life.

And Marian Hicks, who stayed at Freeman’s Mill until the last child left the school at 7 p.m. on that tornado day, feels blessed. She has good students, good staff.

She’s also got the number for Domino’s handy, just in case.