As Tim Fabrisi led his family to he basement of their home near Indianapolis on Wednesday, he knew that the approaching tornado was going to be a bad one.
“There were tornado watches that evening; we all knew it,” Fabrisi, an Assistant Crewchief at John Force Racing, explained. “I just live a couple of miles north of the (John Force Racing) shop, and we heard all the sirens starting to go off. We turned the local news on, and they showed the path, and they said, there’s a tornado on the ground in Brownsburg going northwest. I said, ‘That’s the track from the shop to us.” Like, holy crap.”
The tornado missed the Fabrisi home by about a mile, but as the storm passed, the reality of what had happened hit hard.
“We started seeing pop-ups about the partial building collapse, which was just down the street from our shop,” Fabrisi said. “Our [shop] alarm was going off, and then Duke McCarthy called us up and said, ‘Hey, our shop got hit.’”
On the outside, the apparent damage of two doors blown in and a hole in the roof might not have appeared to be overly devastating, but once they entered the building, they saw the true impact.
If the wind is strong enough to buckle a roll-up door, that force enters the building with the same ferocity that destroyed the entrance and, with it, brings rain and other weather elements. The fact the teams were gone for the night was a blessing, and Fabrisi said he embraces it wholeheartedly.
As of this posting, no other NHRA team has reported damage due to the storm. The Indiana National Guard was activated Wednesday to assist recovery efforts in at least 41 of Indiana’s 92 counties following severe storms. The governor’s office announced the deployment Thursday afternoon.
This storm marks the second time in five days that residents are dealing with damage from severe thunderstorms and tornadoes.
Duke Energy has reported that 98 percent of those who lost power now have service restored. Multiple school districts, including Indianapolis Public Schools, switched to e-learning for the day.
“We were really fortunate,” Fabrisi said. “That’s true. If the racing teams were there [working], we would’ve been in really, really bad shape. The way the winds came through the shop, it would’ve took all the Funny Car bodies, thrown away, flipped the cars over, probably ruined the haulers. We would’ve been in really bad shape. And if the guys were there that time of night, there would’ve been a lot of injuries involved.”
Fabrisi made his way to the shop to assess the damage once the storm subsided, and what caught his attention was not the damage to the structure but instead the number of people waiting to help the team sort out the mess. In addition to the JFR team members, Fabrisi recalls seeing members from Ron Capps Motorsports, Tony Stewart Racing, Cruz Pedregon Racing, and various other motorsports-related people.
“Anyone who was home from any other racing team showed up on their own, checked stuff out, and helped us,” Fabrisi said. “We had a hundred guys there last night at Midnight, help him move this stuff, get out of that area. So I mean, it was pretty astonishing, the turnout we had.
“We are fortunate to have people who willing to help. I mean, strangers off the street, people I’ve never seen, came up and said, ‘Can I help?’” The community pulled together, it was quite amazing to watch, actually.
Fabrisi believes the only setback from the storm will be a logistical one.
“Hopefully, the weather’s nice, and the guys can all work inside the trailers, which we can put in the parking lot and run on generators out there,” Fabrisi said. “If we need to work on the cars, we have the far end of the building with a machine shop and fabrication shop. It was untouched. It was like a direct line that just missed that part. So we can always put the cars back down there, work on the chassis, and put them back in the trailers if we need to.
“The front, where the race haulers went, it’s going to take some time to fix the offices in the front, museum, it’s going to take some time to repair. But as far as operations, we were fortunate; nothing was touched. So we’re just going to keep pushing forward and just deal with the building repairs as we see.”
The storm damage is just another hit that JFR has endured in the last two seasons, starting with Robert Hight’s stepping back from driving due to a medical issue and John Force’s severe crash last June. Fabrisi said JFR’s resiliency is what keeps them moving forward.
“The whole company, I mean, we’ve taken the punches left and right,” Fabrisi, a Marine veteran, said. “Last year was one hit after another on John’s car and Jack’s car, one hit after another. John’s crash, I’ve been through a few with him; I’ve worked here for 16 years now. It’s unfortunate, no matter which way you look at it, but the guys just hold their heads high and keep working. That’s always been my model. Work forward, push forward, just work through it. Put your heads down and work. It’ll keep your mind off the craziness and just focus on our jobs. Let’s do our jobs as best we can.
“The whole company has resilience. They have… I mean, they got the guts for it. They’ve been through the good and the bad. More bad than most, unfortunately.”
As Fabrisi sees it, Wednesday’s storm could have been a lot worse.
“In other communities, communities in other states, they take the brunt of it,” Fabrisi said. “We were just the unfortunate ones last night, and luckily nobody got hurt. Parts can be fixed, buildings can be replaced, but people can’t. We are lucky nobody got hurt.”
