Edwardsburg Public Schools said they made counselors available to students Monday after 12-year-old Silas Anderson was killed in Friday’s tornadoes. On Monday I talked with the family’s next door neighbor.
One of the tornadoes touched down without warning on Silas’ Conrad Road home Friday, about a mile north of U.S 12 west of Edwardsburg. Neighbor Adam Brodzinski says Silas was in the garage when the ceiling fell onto him. He was the son of oral surgeon Taite Anderson and family practice physician Lindsey Anderson.
They had found Silas and tried to revive him before first responders arrived.
Brodzinski says he heard no warning sirens. He says he was halfway down the basement steps to put away some groceries after his wife Barbara and he had tea and a donut.
“All of a sudden I heard this loud BANG! And I thought oh no, lightning struck, awful close," Brodzinski says. "And I come up and my wife says, ‘Look it out there, look at the front!’ And I seen all that lumber and everything like that, and I thought, oh, lightning hit a tree and split it and everything, and then I thought, no, them’s too big of pieces. So I looked out my side window, this was just piled up. We had a whole hay wagon completely full of lumber we cleaned up yesterday from that house blowing up.”
Brodzinski said he and Barbara want to express their sympathy to the Andersons but that will come later after they’ve had some time to process their loss. Silas’ father is oral surgeon Taite Anderson and his mother is family practice physician Lindsey Anderson. The couple had tried to revive Silas before first responders arrived.
Brodzinski said they lost power for two days and have some minor roof damage.
“Completely lost their house, their son, everything. They just completely redid everything, inside and out. Everything. They completely rebuilt that house. Oh my God, what they’re going through, my wife and I says, we feel very fortunate. We were very lucky, very lucky.”
His brother David, who lives next door on the other side with his wife, also named Barbara, said they had just left for Granger to have their 55th anniversary dinner right before the tornado hit.
“All of it was done, just unreal," David Brodzinski said. "It had that touchdown just in that 20-acre piece, raised back up and went on to the east. Makes us wonder if we would have been standing outside watching for it or something. Terrible. Terrible. Then we started hearing that boy might have got hurt. Then later we heard they boy got killed, a 12-year-old. Really bad.”
Both brothers said they’ll be ready to take cover Tuesday night
since severe weather is again forecast.
