Yankee Run GC suffered significant damage as Father’s Day storms uprooted trees and left the Brookfield, Ohio property in disarray. “It was just like a bomb had gone off over a 20-acre area,” said co-owner Gary McMullin. More than 200 volunteers helped to get the family-owned course re-opened after only five days.
A pair of tornadoes tore up parts of Trumbull County in Ohio this Father’s Day. Hit especially hard was Yankee Run Golf Course in Brookfield, WKBN 27 (embed https://www.wkbn.com/news/local-news/brookfield-golf-course-damaged-by-tornado-thanks-community-for-helping-them-reopen/) reported. It took five days to clean the course up and the course reopened on June 22.
Co-owner Gary McMullin told WKBN he didn’t think they’d be able to reopen this soon. As you looked down the course June 24, golfers were warming up and preparing to hit the tees. It was a completely different scene this time last week.
“Trees uprooted, treetops ripped, the tops ripped off. It was just like a bomb had gone off over a 20-acre area,” McMullin said.
He said once you got past the first hole, that’s when you saw the real damage. McMullin told WKBN the devastation “took your breath away.”
“You see the roots of a giant tree sticking seven, eight feet up in the air,” McMullin said. They were laying like that everywhere.”
As with any major storm, the clean-up was just about as bad as the storm, WKBN reported.
“It was very overwhelming. Honestly, I thought we would be closed for a month when I saw how bad it was,” McMullin said.
But word spread throughout the community and people came to help the family-owned golf course clean up, WKBN reported.
“Over the course of last week up ’til today, I would say we’ve had over a total of 200 volunteers,” McMullin told WKBN. He added at this point, they’re almost completely cleaned up.
“There’s still stuff that’s laying down that’s out of play that has to be cleaned up, too,” he said.
In the end, McMullin is thankful for the community and their support. “Really great to know people out there really care,” he told WKBN.
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