BUFFALO, N.Y. — The EF-1 tornado ripped through the lower west side of Buffalo Monday afternoon, including the Johnson Park neighborhood bordering downtown.
"It was chaotic," said Joe Tyson, a Johnson Park resident. "It was shocking, you know? I mean, you're shocked because you're like, what's happening right now?'
Tyson owns a barber shop and noticed two of his patrons struggling in the wind as they left after their haircut.
"She was almost being blown across the street," Tyson said. "So I went outside, debris all in the air, and it was kind of concentrated.'
Ava and David Carson were visiting Buffalo from St. Louis, they were outside roughly 100 yards from Johnson Park.
"My wife looked up and said 'Oh, that looks like a tornado,'" David Carson said. "You could see the legs of the tornado coming across the rooftop."
Ava Carson said the storm was pretty sudden and the public didn't really react at first.
"I don't think that anyone on the street knew quite what to do with it," Ava Carson said. "In St Louis, we've got sirens, we've got notice your phone will go off and there's a tornado. But I think here just it's so out of the usual out of the ordinary."
Tom Wasinski lives next door to his parent on Johnson Park. For several years the family has warned the Buffalo Public School District that a tree on their property was dead and at risk of falling.
The tornado on Monday caused the dead tree to fall on the Wasinski's shed and gazebo.
"I've been calling different places, the city of Buffalo, school, the city hall, and no one's been able to get back to me on why the tree hasn't come down," Wasinski said. "Today [it] came down on our property."
Wasinski hasn't started removing the tree and debris from his family property because he isn't sure who should be taking care of it.
"It's deeply frustrating," Wasinski said. "[I] Just want an answer from the city, and want to understand who's going to take care of this."
2 On Your Side reached out to the school district and city Department of Public Works to try and get an answer, but did not get a response.
Buffalo DPW crews had most of Johnson Park cleared by 7 P.M. on Monday. There were still several light poles that were bent over and broken, and smaller debris scattered throughout the park. Larger branches and chunks of trees, however, were removed by front loaders and dump trucks.
The National Weather Service has collected tornado data since 1950. The only other instance of a tornado in downtown Buffalo was a waterspout on Halloween 2017 that ultimately crossed over to solid ground for a brief moment.