Storm damages businesses in west Lincoln

Sometime around 5:30 p.m. Sunday, a severe storm roared through Lincoln.

Businesses at the intersection of South Coddington Ave. and West Van Dorn St. saw significant damage from a possible tornado.

Whatever it was, it hit the Dairy Sweet building.

Chris Kliment said she was serving a customer when her daughter told her to get underground.

“I wanted to finish the order and she said ‘no, you’re coming now.  Forget the cheeseburger,'” Kliment said.  “And we just got in a cellar and this all hit.”

What they saw when they came back out was their store had collapsed.

They said they’re thankful no one was hurt.

Across the street, Lee’s Chicken Restaurant said around 100 people were in the building around that time.

“Nobody was hurt, but a lot of glass flew around our main dining room,” General Manager Dennis Kann said.  “And that was the scariest part, was the glass was flying.”

Kann said the storm damaged their sign and the front of the building.

Jay Eitzmann said he was driving down West Van Dorn St. when he saw what he said was a funnel cloud in the area.

“I kept watching this funnel cloud all the way and things just never seemed right all the way through,” Eitzmann said.  “And luckily, we turned about two blocks down before we hit this circle here.”

Dairy Sweet said they just got done celebrating 40 years of serving the area.  Some folks who talked to Channel 8 said it’s tough to imagine them being gone.

There is a GoFundMe page set up to help rebuild Dairy Sweet:
https://www.gofundme.com/rebuild-dairy-sweet?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fb_dn_cpgnsharemore_r