SAN ANTONIO – One of the four vicious tornados that hit near the north side of San Antonio Sunday night slammed Linda Drive, then managed to hop over Highway 281 right into another dense neighborhood on Lorenz Street.
The path went clear through a church, several large apartment complexes, and it even nicked two schools.
Kelly McMakin was sporting a pretty good shiner Monday. She was one of the injured in the tornado.
"I was out here when it was going down," McMakin said.
Then he and his wife hunkered down.
"We kind of got around to the toilet itself, so if the glass shattered, we wouldn't have a problem," McMakin said.
When asked if that's where he spent the night, he joked, "Right -- in the toilet. Very romantic."
Outside, his truck was smashed, and his courtyard and garage remain a mess.
"We had just put on a new roof two months ago," he said. "We will be getting a new one. This roof is a flat roof. It's now next door."
And just like a typical tornado, next door there wasn't much damage.
"The tornado must have come over the top of us, then moved through about 10 houses, then disappeared," homeowner Steve Burton said.
Before it did, though, it tore the whole side wall off of the Chateau Dijon apartments, collapsed another complex's carport and crushed more than a half dozen cars parked inside.
It also turned the St. Anthony de Padua Catholic Church complex into an obstacle course. The main church is fine, but the old church and some residences are now very wet inside.
"There's a lot of water in the floor and the ceilings," church worker Polo Rivera said. "(There are) windows broken -- it's a bad mess inside. (It's) real, real, real bad inside."
Father Kevin Shanahan said with so many elderly nuns and priests living there, he knows they got off easy.
"We were very lucky, very fortunate," Shanahan said.
For some others, the aftermath of the tornado will require a lot of patience. Cars were lost, and in some cases, air conditioning units will need replacing, like one found randomly in a tree on Lorenz and Broadway.
It was a messy Monday in a normally neat little neighborhood.
Also visibly damaged by the winds was the roof at Howard Early Childhood Education Center, as well as the entrance at Alamo Heights Junior High School.
The superintendent of Alamo Heights I.S.D. has already notified the district that school will take place despite the damage. He's also asked residents to come out and help with the cleanup.