CALHAN, COLO. -- Thursday will be one week since severe storms and tornadoes ripped through southeastern Colorado. Though the storms are gone, the mess they left behind isn't.
Dozens of families in Ramah and Calhan were still working Wednesday on cleaning up the damage, including Wendy Summers and her family.
A tornado touched down at their home and destroyed seven buildings and part of their house.
"Stuff started hitting the house, and then the roofs were going, and the house actually lifted and dropped. The whole time I was just thinking 'we're in Calhan, we're not in Kansas!'" Summers said.
Summers said in 20 seconds 30 years of hard work was destroyed.
"Twenty seconds of horrible, and then it was done," she said.
"This barn, when they put it up I must have been 15 or 16 years old, and I was out here with the crew slinging nails, you know I helped them build, I actually built this barn," David Summers, Wendy's son, said.
There were 10 people inside the house when the tornado ripped through. The house doesn't have a basement, so they tried to find the safest place possible.
"We had seven people in the little bathroom and a couple of us in doorways," Wendy said.
Everyone made it through the incident, which is what they said was the most important thing.
"The first night that was our main concern is everyone was fine, no one was injured 'cause we even had kids, grandkids and my two great-grand-babies were here," Wendy said.
The family said they think their house was spared because of where it was placed among the other buildings. Still, the house sustained severe damage, and they are currently living in only half of the home.
The family is working on cleaning up but said they are being held back by their insurance company, American Modern.
"We're really stuck 'cause we still haven't heard from our insurance company," Wendy said.
She said they have tried visiting their broker and have made several calls to no avail.
"We have a broker in town that I went there personally the next morning and let her know what had happened, and she said you know 'We'll try to get adjusters out. It will take a few days,' did not hear from them. Monday I went and called them again to see what was happening, and they assured me that someone would be out in the next couple days, did not happen," Wendy said.
She said they aren't sure what they can clean up because no one has been out to assess the damage.
"I don't know what we can do and can't do. We've tried to salvage what we could," she said.
The adjuster assigned to the claim, Michael Willhite, said he is on his way from Las Vegas and expected to arrive at the Summers' home Thursday afternoon.
"Sometimes this happens when there is lots of claims in one area," Willhite said.
He said response times slow when there are a lot of claims but wasn't sure why the Summers' hadn't been contacted. He said he was assigned to their claim Monday.
"We try to contact people as quickly as possible, and sometimes we're not able to do that," he said.
Willhite said he understands the Summers' frustrations and said he hopes it's something the company can work on.
"It's something that we're always trying to improve on, and hopefully we can do better," he said.
Despite all the destruction and their frustrations, the Summers remain in good spirits and are looking ahead instead of behind them.
"LIke mother says it hurts that you lose all your stuff, but it's just stuff. You know you can't get excited about stuff when all the family is okay, that's the big part," David said.
TV Station Profiles & Public Inspection Files forKXRM