Recovery just starting for Fridley storm victims

The world as Mike Quinn once knew it was about to collapse. But on the eve of his 57th birthday, Quinn stood outside his Fridley home, throwing caution literally to the fierce wind, watching the sky and his immediate future turn black.

The rain pelted the elaborate backyard gardens Quinn and his wife, Leann, had spent 14 years cultivating. Thick, sturdy trees, one of them the tallest on 66th Avenue NE., began to sway when Leann, who captured the scene on video, began calling for her husband.

"Oh, oh, Mike, it's coming pretty bad," Leann can be heard shouting from the kitchen. "Oh, my Lord! Holy cow!"

As Leann scurried downstairs and Mike attempted to shut the wind-blown patio doors, the trees surrounding the house began to crack, sounding like "shotgun blasts," Mike recalled last week.

The tallest of five mature trees in the yard toppled into the house, crushing the roof, tearing the ceiling and decimating the gardens. Water poured through the ceiling. The good silver fell from the shelf.

"Are we safe yet, Mike?" Leann can be heard shouting on the video.

The day after a tornado ripped through the Twin Cities, the Quinns' neighborhood looked like a war zone -- as did many other Fridley neighborhoods that stood in the tornado's path.

The box car that blew over, the torn high-school athletic-field field press box and the damaged Little League stands at Commons Park stadium provided fodder for water-cooler conversations immediately after the storm.

Here are a few stories that will remain with Fridley residents the rest of their lives:

'Get to the basement'

Jim and Paula Trafas have lived on Clearview Street NE. since 1983 and were in the midst of renovating their kitchen 10 days ago. But Sunday was a day to relax.

Jim, 71, was on the couch, watching TV when Paula, 61, noticed the horizontal news bar at the bottom of the screen. A tornado had been spotted in St. Louis Park, and Fridley was possibly in its path.

"Gotta get to the basement now," Paula told her husband. They grabbed the dog, a small bichon, and closed the front door. They were hovering near the laundry tubs when Paula remembers hearing a loud boom.

The pine tree that used to be in the front yard had hit the house. The top of the tree brushed the back of Jim's car.

"From under the steps where we were, we could see the swirling," Paula said. "It kept getting louder and then, just like that, it stopped. There was light out. It was over."

But the hard part was just beginning.

"Luckily," said Paula, "it didn't hit the kitchen."

Next door, Aislinn Dorko, 41, a nurse, surveyed the dismantling of her yard with her mother, Patricia Robinson.

A tree -- one of three mature ones that had been ripped from the ground -- had landed on the garage. The shed that held the lawn mower had been moved several yards and now was crushed against the back of the house.

"I'm just glad we didn't lose the treehouse," Dorko said.

When they're in that treehouse, her children, Brynnah, 11, and Addison, 3, will have plenty to talk about.

Kenneth Dorko, 46, and the two kids were home when the sirens sounded. He was trying to close the side door to the house -- and couldn't -- when their lives collided with the storm.

"I can only imagine what my kids may have seen," she said.

'Where we wanted to be'

The Quinns were doing their own surveying in another neighborhood miles away -- miles dotted with pockets of sadness along neighborhood streets strewn with broken branches, torn insulation and metal scraps.

Mike Quinn, a design-decorator at a local church, had planned on seeing the new "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie. But the storm intervened.

The gardens he treasured were destroyed. The house's drenched insulation would have to be removed. The backyard tree that fell was now lying in the front yard.

The circles under their eyes suggested that he and Leann had a restless night after the storm. Amazingly, they spent the night in their house.

"We got a neighbor's generator, so we had electricity and were able to stay here," Mike Quinn said.

He didn't seem to think anything of it.

"This," he said, "is our house. This is where we wanted to be."