TAYLORVILLE, Ill. (WAND) — It was a dreamy winter day — until it wasn't.
Randy Crowder will never forget December 1, 2018. It's a day that is burned in his memory — and the memories of everyone who lived in Taylorville at that time.
"Everything was gone," he said. "People [were] screaming buried under their houses. It was a nightmare."
Taylorville has been waking up from that nightmare for five years now. That warm December day was supposed to feature the town's Christmas parade. Instead, it turned into a frantic race to save lives.
"As soon as the storm went through, the call volume went through the roof," said Taylorville Fire Chief Matthew Adermann.
An EF-3 tornado slammed into Taylorville's southwest side in the early evening hours that night. The 155 mph winds destroyed homes and injured 22 people — but no deaths were attributed to the storm. Still the wicked winds leveled about everything in their path — everything except Crowder's homemade storm shelter.
"We made it to the shelter," he said. "A few minutes later, the whole neighborhood was gone."
Crowder built the shelter to occupy his mind after his wife told him she was pregnant. Six years later, that project may have saved their lives.
"You could hear the rumbling and stuff," Crowder said. "You could hear it pecking on the door, but that was it."
Adermann was a fire captain back then. He was planning on taking his family to the parade that night. But his plans quickly blew away with the growing winds when the parade was canceled about an hour before the tornado struck.
"I'll never forget the first call that came in from our dispatch," he said. "The address was next to this fireman's home. He was actually working, so he responded to that area...and he came upon his own house that was destroyed."
Nick Hackney was one of the firefighters on duty that night. WAND News caught up with him the day after the storm in 2018 as he surveyed the damage to his home — just a few hundred feet from where Crowder took shelter.
"I continued working through the night and knew I'd have to take care of it in the morning," he said at the time. "We come together as a community and get things done."
Damage in the aftermath of the 2018 Taylorville tornado.
That's exactly what Taylorville did. In the days, weeks and months following the storm, almost everyone was outside clearing debris, sawing logs and surveying damage to secure state funding.
"It was great seeing neighbor helping neighbor — neighborhoods helping other neighborhoods that might not have been quite as damaged," said Taylorville mayor Bruce Barry.
The neighborhood has changed, but Crowder hasn't. He lifted his home back onto its original spot — because even if the storm shook its foundation — he didn't let it shake his.
"I've lived in this area — this house right here — for 16 years," he said. "If you've got something, you take care of it. If it breaks, you fix it."
