GRANDVIEW, Mo. — Storms that passed through the Kansas City metro on Thursday night hit the southern part of Grandview hard, according to the city's fire chief.
"It caught us off guard," Chief Ron Graham said. "I thought I heard severe thunderstorm warnings by our meteorologists and that it was all up north and then this one blew in really quick."
A lighting strike from the mid-summer storm sparked a fire in the basement of a home at 152nd Terrace and Bellaire Avenue, becoming one of several calls that kept Grandview firefighters busy throughout the night.
Everyone including the family dog made it out of that home safely, though the Red Cross was called to help them find temporary housing.
Up the street from the fire, high winds on White Avenue uprooted a massive tree, and a portion of it landed on a nearby home.
A neighbor thought the sound of it was just another thunderclap. So did Eui Hwang when part of a tree struck her duplex near the River Oak Golf Course.
"It was just a big thump," Hwang said. "I did feel that in the room downstairs. It hit something, which is why I went upstairs and checked."
She found a hole in one of the walls of her second-floor bedroom that restoration crews boarded up.
"I recently moved," Hwang said. "In California, you don’t see this on a daily basis over there."
Although there was a lot of property damage, no injuries were reported.
