As Big O Tires opened its store at 1701 W Elm St. in Lebanon for the first time on Monday, May 4, store manager Colby Shadrick stepped outside to commemorate the occasion with a photo just before 2 pm. The brand-new store, which has seven automotive service bays, and its gleaming signage stood out against the backdrop of an overcast sky.
Within 19 minutes, Shadrick would be outside taking another photo of the store’s exterior, only this time it would be to document the carnage of a windstorm with gusts of 90 miles per hour that ripped through southwest Lebanon.
Ed Harper, vice president of retail automotive, was in the store’s lobby with Shadrick and Charlie Alexander, director of Big O Tires operations, when the storm hit the building. He noticed the showroom’s ceiling tiles began to flex and lift and then turned to see the store’s crew running in from the service bays.
“They were running toward the lobby and shouting that half of our roof had been torn off,” Harper recalls.
As a barrage of rain and hail fell upon the once covered automotive service area, Shadrick and Alexander noticed the pressure from the storm was starting to pull the door to the showroom open and they worked to hold it shut while other employees guided the customers who were present into an interior office area for shelter.
The storm and its straight-line winds passed quickly but left a trail of destruction in its wake. Powerline poles were snapped, a church’s steeple was toppled, small planes at the local airport were flipped over, boats at the Tracker manufacturing facility had been thrown across the interstate and a nearby truck plaza had its cinder block walls blown down.
“There was no warning, no sirens,” Shadrick says. “Luckily, no one was hurt. We lost about 45 feet of our roof and our power, but that’s repairable.”
The store was without power for more than a day, but Shadrick says he and his crew were still able to do some work in four of the building’s seven bays thanks to supplemental power from a portable generator.
The store in Lebanon is the 21st that is owned and operated by MFA Petroleum Company, a subsidiary of MFA Oil. Construction is underway on another Big O Tires store in Sedalia that is expected to open later this summer.
MFA Petroleum has owned and managed Big O Tires franchise stores since 1998.