LI Photographer ‘Had Nowhere To Go’ During Tornado

SHIRLEY, NY — As photographer Christine Heeren shot the Colonials’ football game at William Floyd High School in Mastic Beach on Saturday afternoon, she paid close attention to the sky above the field given the National Weather Service’s tornado warning that was in effect for Long Island.

It was a beautiful, sunny day and the temperature was perfect. But at one point, the sky started to become darker and filled with ominous-looking clouds, so she continued to document the sky’s changes in her shots.

“I'm actually like this huge weather geek, and I've been following storm chasers for 10 years,” said Heeren, 52, who follows weather news along with her son, who is studying to be a meteorologist.

As the sky darkened, the game was called early, with the Colonials achieving yet another win. Heeren began making her way home to Yaphank with a dark sky overhead.

“I basically got out of there as soon as I could,” she said.

At 3:40 p.m., she received a tornado warning on her phone. It was specific to the Mastic-Shirley area and would be in effect until 4:15 p.m. As she was heading north on William Floyd Parkway in Shirley, she began to film every few seconds.

“Just being a photographer, I was, like, ‘I need to get this on camera.’ Do you know what I mean?” Heeren said.

When the sky started to pelt rain along the roadway, it appeared to be a regular rainstorm. But that changed, seemingly in 10 seconds, after she pulled over some railroad tracks, traveled past a funeral home, and drove alongside the strip known to locals as “Fast Food Corner.”

“It started raining a little bit, and then it was just like, all of a sudden this burst of wind,” Heeren said. “I didn't hear anything. I didn't see anything. I just start seeing things flying around.”

“And then, I basically just had a panic attack in the car,” Heeren recalled with a laugh.

In Heeren’s roughly two-minute video that she posted to Twitter, she can be heard repeating, the words, ‘Oh, my God,’ over and over as she films the intersection where the parkway meets Montauk Highway.

The wind had picked up debris across the intersection, and it was hurled into the air as she sat inside her Jeep Wrangler in disbelief. The debris was so thick that it was difficult to make out the traffic lights just a few cars ahead. It was only four minutes after she had received the warning alert.

As Heeren captured the phenomenon on video, including a tree split in half on the south side of the parkway where there is a shopping center with Lidl and Dollar Tree, as well as several restaurants. What she did not know at the time was that an EF1 tornado, a weaker-strength tornado, had “likely” touched down in the area and blown off part of the shopping center’s awning, according to the National Weather Service.

“I had seen so much, so many videos of tornadoes that I was afraid that the car was going to lift up and start rolling,” Heeren said, noting she was unsure if she would get through the experience. “For me, I have so many visuals in my head of these horrific tornadoes, and I actually used to follow storm chasers who died in tornadoes. Yeah, it's like literally a thing that I have nightmares about — being stuck in a tornado.”

The tornado that hit Shirley was the strongest of four that touched down on Saturday, including one in Nassau County that tore through neighborhoods in Woodmere and Levittown, and another one in East Islip in Suffolk County. A fourth tornado, an EF0 with even less strength, was confirmed on Monday to also have touched down farther east in Remsenberg and Westhampton.

The tornado had "hooked northeast” over Lidl and flipped over a 50-ton air handler unit on the roof “before tearing off” the awning “and collapsing the covered walkway" over Chipotle Mexican Grill, NWS officials said Sunday evening.

The damage path was about 25 yards, consistent with gusts of wind from 95 to 105 mph, NWS officials stated in a news release.

There is no way to be certain that Heeren was inside the tornado at the moment it touched down, as NWS officials who referenced her video only reported seeing “tornadic circulation.”

"Public video showed the apparent tornadic circulation lifting northeast across the intersection of William Floyd Parkway and Montauk Highway" toward the Applebee's shopping center "with debris being thrown in one direction or another," NWS officials said.

It lasted between 3:42 and 3:50 p.m, they said.

At the moment, all Heeren could think of was getting across the intersection.

“But there was nowhere for me to go,” she said. “I was literally like a sitting duck waiting for something catastrophic to happen.”

As soon as she could, she made her way into the parking lot of Applebee’s, where there was a downed tree and the bottom corner of the front door was broken because something struck it. A woman inside was crying because she was worried about her dog.

Heeren’s hands were shaking after the ordeal, she said.

“I was honestly traumatized and my adrenaline was pumping,” she said, noting that she thought to herself, “‘I think that was a tornado and I was in the middle of it.’”