Kong and the Tornado

"It was about 5:45PM, EST, and I was working late at the KONG warehouse waiting for an extra-fierce Florida Thunderstorm to pass. All of our power was out but I was doing some internet work on battery back-up (our T-3 is on back-up too).

I took a brief break to use the restroom in the dark when I heard a loud pounding on the front door of the office. I ignored it but the person kept pounding away, so I stumbled to the front office and discovered my neighbor Jack in an excited state.

Jack said that his wife had heard on the radio that a powerful tornado had just landed on Interstate 95 and was heading towards our Industrial Park and that I needed to get out right away.

We stepped outside under the awning and I told Jack that my Girlfriend was a little north of us in Palm Beach Gardens and that the house she was in was severely flooded and the wind was howling like a hurricane!

At that moment we looked up to see a large funnel-cloud swirling directly above us. We both just watched as the tornado passed directly over us. It moved in slow motion, neither one of us were really scared, we just kind of watched its awesome power like a bug in a bottle.

After a few seconds, the tornado continued to move in a southerly direction away from us and Jack laughed and said he was going to jump in the lake (next to our office) if the thing backtracked to get us!

We watched as the funnel started to descend about 2 or 3 blocks away from us but could not see it actually hit ground because of other warehouses blocking our view.

The funnel of the tornado descended for 4 or 5 seconds and then lifted off the ground again and continued wagging its vicious tail on its merry way through Riviera Beach.

It was not until later that night that I learned that in the few seconds that the tornado descended next to us it completely peeled the roof of the neighboring Pepsi-Cola Bottling plant where about 300 people were employed, destroyed high-voltage lines, uprooted huge trees like twigs and lifted fully loaded tractor trailers and littered them all about the park and in a neighboring canal like so much confetti!

The force of nature is truly awesome. Here are some pictures we took late the next day after much of the clean-up was done. I guess it was just our great fortune that the Fates had that tornado skip right over us and instead of taking its path straight through us.

It looks like, for a powerful tornado, it’s just as easy to go through a building as around it!

Enjoy the pics and Keep it up (with KONG)!

by: Herb Bryant

Here is Herb (KMS President) & Todd (KMS Creative Director) in the aftermath of the tornado.
click the small images to see larger ones.