Area in 'a Daze' After Tornadoes

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Fierce Storm Rips Through Stafford County

News Channel 8's Matt Brock reports on the extensive storm damage in Stafford County, Va.

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The torrent gave some residents the opportunity to flout repeated admonitions from authorities about driving through standing water.

Yesterday, Prince George's firefighters found two cars submerged on the Berry Road ramp leading to northbound Indian Head Highway, near the Prince George's and Charles line. The motorists apparently tried to drive through a large pool of water, said Mark Brady, a spokesman for the Prince George's fire department, and got stuck when the water reached window-level. The cars had been abandoned with their doors open, he said.

The heavy rains caused a sanitary sewer overflow at the Washington Suburban Sanitation Commission's Western Branch Waste Water Treatment Plant in Upper Marlboro. The overflow, which began after 11:15 a.m. and continued last night, was expected to send more than 1 million gallons of untreated, diluted wastewater flowing into Western Branch.

At the WSSC's Broad Creek Pumping Station in Fort Washington, about 968,000 gallons of untreated diluted wastewater overflowed into Broad Creek.

Thousands of residents lost power, including about 12,900 Dominion Virginia customers. About 3,900 remained affected last night, a spokesman said. By 10 a.m. yesterday, 11,800 Pepco customers reported they had lost power, spokesman Robert Dobkin said. Most were in Prince George's. By 5 p.m., power had yet to be restored to 1,500 customers.

Along Foggy Field Lane in Stafford, insulation that had been piped into homes built there in the past few years had been blown across the landscape, looking like a soggy dusting from a snow blower.

After the tornado, Larry and Debbie Olson emerged from the basement of the house they rent on the road and did not initially see anything wrong in their bedroom.

"It was dark, and we were rattled. It took a while to realize the wall was totally gone," said Larry Olson, who works for a defense contractor. Walls on the left and right sides of the house had blown out.

"You can look in like a dollhouse."

The sofa Debbie had been sitting on moments before while folding the laundry was upside down.

Yesterday, they returned to the house to assess the damage. Five books were still on the nightstand, and the treadmill was standing. They grabbed computers, a red-and-white quilt sewn by Debbie's great-grandmother, and a blanket and caps from their son's shrine to the Washington Redskins.

"There's my daughter's shoe from prom," said Debbie, picking up the silver dress shoe from grass dotted with window shards and chunks of house frame with protruding nails. "There's a mate around here somewhere."

Staff writers Bill Brubaker, Dan Morse, Sandhya Somashekhar, Eric Weiss and Matt Zapotosky and photographer Mark Gail contributed to this report.