Mt. Jackson poultry farm leveled in wake of apparent tornado

View larger image With an overturned trailer in the background, Donal Shamburg, 82, surveys the damage Thursday at his poultry farm west of Mt. Jackson. Rich Cooley/Daily Slideshow VIEW TORNADO DAMAGE SLIDESHOW

By Preston Knight -- pknight@nvdaily.com

MT. JACKSON -- Its normal resting place obliterated, with pieces possibly lodged in a camper or slammed against a car several hundred yards away, a lone white pigeon soars, swoops and lands in an unfamiliar puddle, evidently discombobulated.

"He doesn't know where to go," Charlie Kibler said.

The bird wasn't alone.

On Donal Shamburg's sprawling Kelly Road farm next to Orkney Grade, where numerous family members live or reside nearby, the devastation from an apparent tornado at approximately 2:30 a.m. Thursday had everyone on the property wondering where to begin the recovery hours later. A pair of two-story poultry houses, sheds and vehicles were among the casualties. Countless chickens were killed. One survivor, though, was the pigeon, which, for the last two months, made a bed out of the back of one of the 19 calves that Shamburg kept in one of the houses.

Remarkably, all but one calf lived through the storm, despite all 19 being trapped under debris.

Late Thursday morning, Shamburg, 82, with plenty of family support by his side, continued to survey the damage, which should easily surpass $1 million. In the Northern Shenandoah Valley, the farm could be considered "ground zero" for the relentless storm.

The most amazing aspect of the ordeal was that none of the Shamburg family's residences were severely damaged and there were no injuries, despite how close the suspected twister appeared to hit.

"You see it on TV," said Kibler, 54, the farmer's son-in-law, "but you don't know how bad it really is until you look at it."

To assess the storm's leftovers Thursday, one who has never seen a tornado's remnants begins to understand the picture. A piece of lumber pierced the side of a camper on the property. A new truck that was parked inside a chicken house was overturned, while, as bad luck would have it, an older vehicle that was parked outside and next to the building appeared fine. Insulation was everywhere.

"As far as I'm concerned, other than seeing it on TV ... that's all I know about a tornado," Shamburg said. "I guarantee one thing, when people see this in the news, the more they talk about this, they're going to wake up to it."

Donal Cook, 16, one of Shamburg's grandchildren, stood at the side door of his house, at 340 Kelly Road, at one point during the storm and turned away before hearing a loud bang. Remnants of one of the poultry houses had smacked his mother's car.

"It was," Cook said, pausing, "pretty scary."

He said he never feared for his life, but playing the "what if" game, he can coax himself into viewing the harrowing experience as one that could have been fatal. Cook said the window in his bedroom was open, and something could have easily gone through it before he had a chance to shut it.

Moreover, the shredded chicken house could have torn through the house instead of ending up against his mother's car, given that it was parked only a few feet away. Cook surmises that his grandmother -- Shamburg's wife, June -- who died last April, had something to do with it.

"We got so lucky," he said. "We've been saying, she saw all the houses."

Shamburg has the look of a strong man to a stranger, and his jovial attitude, such as joking about being irresistible to women after talking to a Shenandoah County official on the phone, and his resolve given the circumstances -- his response to a question about what he plans to do was "Keep on farming" -- confirm what the eye sees. But his grandson said Shamburg has taken his wife's death hard, and when the conversation turned to her on Thursday, there was a glimpse at where his heart stands. It's an unfamiliar place, and has been for a year, like where his new pet pigeon now finds itself.

"She had a hand in me all my life for about 55 years," Shamburg said of his wife. "[Her death] was worse on me than this is, I can tell you that right now. That was way worse on me than this."