Wisconsin News

Fox Valley still picking up the pieces from tornado

August 5, 2026

Photo and story by WPR/Joe Schulz

When a tornado with wind speeds of up to 140 mph struck Menasha around noon last Monday, resident Chris Silver was working in Sturgeon Bay.

His 12-year-old son was still at home.

As the storm blew through, Silver raced through debris and downed power lines to get back to him. All he could think about was making sure his son was OK.

“He hid in the basement,” Silver said as he became emotional speaking outside his home last week. “I just got through going under all these electrical wires in my work vehicle to see my kid. How did these other people feel? They were home.”

Silver’s house is located in an especially hard-hit neighborhood, near Plank Road and Manderfield’s Bakery. Silver said it’s one of the few on the block that hasn’t been “ripped to shreds.”

“I feel absolutely terrible for my neighbors,” he said. “They’re picking through their stuff, their whole lives, everything, their kids’ clothes, and it’s gone. Our whole neighborhood, it’s gone.”

As he spoke, Silver looked out on almost unimaginable destruction in his neighborhood.

“I don’t care about any of the stuff. That could be replaced,” he said. “But my family, my community, we need help.”

Some homes are completely gone — all that’s left are scattered piles of lumber, drywall and insulation. Some houses shifted off foundations or were left with walls torn away to reveal rooms inside. Cars were flipped. Many of the trees that remain no longer have leaves or branches.

A neighborhood that had been untouched that morning is now a sea of debris. The community is in the early stages of what could be a yearslong recovery.

The National Weather Service says the tornado developed over Appleton around noon last Monday, tracking south for 12 miles before dissipating over Lake Winnebago. Menasha and Fox Crossing were the hardest hit communities.

Fox Crossing Village Manager Jeffrey Sturgell told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that the village is still working on its damage assessment numbers from the disaster. But he called the impact “significant.”

“Just tremendous amounts of damage, downed homes everywhere,” he said. “We have homes that were basically crushed. We have a lot of homes with major damage and many with minor damage, and the vegetative debris is simply immense.”

One of the buildings destroyed was the village’s Fire Station 41. Sturgell said some firefighters crawled their way out of the rubble to report its destruction and respond to emergency calls.

The storm left many residents shaken, even those whose homes didn’t suffer serious damage.

“I’ve lived in Wisconsin since I was a child,” said Menasha resident Jacquelyne Reider, who visited the hardest-hit area after the storm. “I’ve never experienced a tornado before. This is crazy. I just feel so bad for all these people that lost their homes.”

Dozens of buildings were destroyed and even more sustained serious damage. Despite the level of destruction, there were no fatalities or serious injuries.

A spokesperson for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, said via email the agency is monitoring the state and local response, but there has not yet been a request for federal assistance.

Emergency management officials began conducting damage assessments late last week. That’s part of the process of gathering information to make a request for federal disaster relief, according to Winnebago County Emergency Management.

A spokesperson for Wisconsin Emergency Management said the state can’t request federal disaster assistance until local resources are exhausted and damage assessments are complete.

“A request for federal assistance is made only after state and local agencies have exhausted all available resources responding to a disaster,” the spokesperson said in an email. “Federal disaster assistance programs are complex, and it takes time to determine if communities are eligible.”

Last week, Gov. Tony Evers declared a state of emergency and mobilized the Wisconsin National Guard to support the recovery effort.

“Entire neighborhoods are hurting, and we are committed to doing everything we can to help them recover,” Evers said in a statement. “By activating the Wisconsin National Guard, we’re ensuring every available resource is deployed quickly and effectively to support cleanup, restore essential services, and keep folks safe as recovery efforts continue.”

Winnebago County Executive Gordon Hintz made the request for National Guard assistance in the city of Menasha, the town of Neenah and the village of Fox Crossing. He said the help was needed for what’s expected to be a long recovery.

The “National Guard exists to help sustain recovery efforts and so they’re really partners in the process,” Hintz said.

According to a Wisconsin National Guard spokesperson, more than 50 service members have been deployed to the Fox Valley, assisting with traffic control, debris clearance and welfare checks.

“The Wisconsin National Guard stands ready to assist for as long as needed and will continue coordinating with local leadership to ensure support is timely, effective and mission‑focused,” the spokesperson said via email.

In the days after the storm, officials urged those who do not live in affected areas to stay away to allow crews to clear debris and to respect residents’ privacy.

“If you don’t need to be in the city of Menasha, please don’t,” Menasha Mayor Austin Hammond said last week. “Residents in our community are going through some of the darkest moments of their life right now, and people are trying to do important work.”

Menasha resident Douglas Johnson was visiting his mother in Appleton when the storm hit. He came home to find his house on Third Street torn to pieces.

The house was leaning off its foundation — the front wall ripped off. Part of the second floor had collapsed.

“The whole top of it’s gone. Everything else is gone inside,” he said. “It’s just like it was gutted out by wind.”

Other nearby buildings were completely destroyed. As he spoke, he looked toward what had been his neighbor’s home.

“You can see it’s just one big pile,” he said, gesturing toward a large mound of debris. “That was a house.”

While Johnson wasn’t home when the tornado hit, his dog was.

“She crawled underneath the crawl space in my bed, and that’s where we found her — she’s alive,” he said.

Down the street, Wayne Bokelman’s home suffered major storm damage and his garage collapsed. He also wasn’t home when the tornado ripped through.

“I was at work,” he recalled. “My wife called and said that the house was like a train, and then it got calm. And then she came upstairs and she said, ‘There’s just water all over, and part of the roof was gone.’”

Even though the house was badly damaged, Bokelman said the storm didn’t take everything.

“What we’re doing now is we’re just getting some pictures that means something and some clothes and we’re gonna probably stay down by my sister in Oshkosh,” he said.

The cleanup effort is expected to take time, but officials say they’ve seen a groundswell of support, through both volunteers and donations.

Volunteer Fox Cities, a local nonprofit supporting relief efforts, says they’ve had more than 7,000 volunteers in just the first week of the recovery. That number counts people more than once if they volunteered multiple days. On Saturday alone, they saw more than 3,000 volunteers.

Hammond, the Menasha mayor, told WPR last week that he believes the community will emerge “stronger at the end of this.”

“We just need to continue to be together as a community in partnership with each other, look out for each other, and Menasha will be stronger in the end as we continue to rebuild,” he said. “But I know in a moment like this, it’s hard to look that far ahead.”