Wind damage no April Fool’s joke in Geneva

GENEVA – Instead of working inside her restaurant as she usually does each day, Irene Hrisko was surveying the damage outside it the morning of Wednesday, April 1, in downtown Geneva.
The evening before on Tuesday, March 31, high winds tore the roof off the building where Hrisko’s Honeybee’s restaurant and other businesses are located. Yellow caution tape was strung up outside the businesses’ rear entrances amid the aftermath.
The winds also ripped off the restaurant’s hood, sending it over the side of the building and to the ground. The winds also took their toll at other places in the city.
“I was devastated,” Hrisko said of her reaction after learning of the damage. “This is our livelihood. I worked hard for this.”
Hrisko estimated that her restaurant would be closed for a while as repairs are made.
After being torn off by the wind, the roof blew through the air, landing in front of the Artisan building across town. Fortunately, no one was injured and no vehicles were damaged.
“No one is hurt, thank God,” Hrisko said.
City of Geneva Assistant Fire Chief Tim Parks said the wind started blowing around 6 p.m. The fire department was called at 6:03 p.m.
“We ended up with 13 calls in two hours,” he said.
He thought the wind seemed like a microburst, but noted that the National Weather Service would have to make that determination.
“It came straight across,” he said, noting the wind roared through the city very fast.
When asked for comment, Brian Mitchell, observing program leader with the National Weather Service in Cleveland, said severe thunderstorms produced strong straight-line winds. He said the winds were measured at 63 mph at Northeast Ohio Regional Airport.
Parks noted that another section from the roof of the building where Honeybee’s is located was lying on the east side of the structure, in addition to the restaurant’s hood.
“The exhaust system for Honeybee’s, it goes up the side of the building, it’s all gone,” he added.
In addition, some apartment windows in the back of the building were blown out by the wind, he said. All the apartments in the building were evacuated. The residents had places to go, so the Red Cross wasn’t needed, Parks said.
Haylee Eibl, owner of The Crystal Cottage, located in the same building as Honeybee’s, was cleaning up Wednesday morning.
“The roof blew off and landed there (at The Artisan building), and then basically everything just leaked straight-down,” she said. “It (the roof) was all the way across the street. It was pretty crazy.”
Even the tornado sirens went off a couple times, she noted.
Eibl was counting herself lucky because at her store, only a couple ceiling tiles came down. There was also some water on the floor.
“It missed all of our inventory,” she said. “Luckily, someone was looking out for us.”
She said the wind “whipped through,” causing havoc.
“There were pieces of building in front of Dark Room (Brewery) and stuff over there too,” she said. “Everything ended up everywhere it shouldn’t be. It was a little nuts.”
Tony Capo, owner of Robot Zero Comics, located in the same building next door to Eibl, said there was minimal damage to his store and inventory. His family’s pizza shop wasn’t damaged.
He said Geneva City Council member Brad MacMichael contacted him Wednesday morning to make sure everything was OK.
“He’s doing his best to help where he can,” he said.
Capo hadn’t seen such winds in a while.
“It’s crazy,” he said. “The tornado sirens went off, so that made it a little scary last night because everyone was asking like what were the sirens for.”
He was reopening last Wednesday.
The wind damage could also be seen on the WKKY building in town, where roofing spilled onto the ground.
The fire department’s report contained a list of all the calls.
They included a tree into a building on Depot Street/North Eagle Street, wires down on South Cedar Street, a tree down on North Crowell Avenue/East Main Street, and a large tree into a house on East Main Street, among others.

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