AURORA - About as quickly as he stepped outside to check on unsettled weather at about 9:15 Wednesday night, Jeff Juzyk realized he needed to get back inside again.

"I saw this incredible black (cloud) just right in line with the house," the 30-year-old father of four said. "I just assumed it wasn't good."

Bearing down on a rented farmhouse about 5 miles west of downtown Aurora was the same tornado that had ripped off part of the roof at the Iams pet food processing plant seconds earlier on the other side of U.S. 34.

Juzyk and his wife, Stacie, scooped up Jenna, 5, Anna, 3, Jackson, 2, and Jake, 8 months, and raced to the basement.

The tornado funnel almost immediately tore off the roof, destroyed a nearby barn and pole building, and totaled their car. The family hunkered down and survived intact.

"It was obviously the Lord's hand that protected us," Jeff Juzyk said Thursday morning, "because things would not have turned out the same if we had not made it down there."

Little more than a year after a May 29 tornado missed Aurora's southern outskirts by a half mile, another one got within about 3 1/2 miles of its western edge Wednesday night before veering off to the north.

It was part of a wild weather night that produced several other tornadoes and hail-laden thunderstorms in central and eastern Nebraska.

Kirt Smith, Hamilton County's emergency management director, said he knew of no serious injuries along the local storm path, which stretched at least 5 miles from southwest to northeast.

The serious property damage appeared limited to the one farmstead, the pet food plant, a nearby fertilizer plant and a derailed Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight train.

"People always say there's something here that protects Aurora," Smith said in taking note of two near disasters in two years. "I don't believe that, obviously."

He praised the weather-spotting response by firefighters from Aurora and others from Hampton, Giltner, Phillips, Marquette and Hordville.

Kathy Brown, manager of the pet food plant that markets much of its production under an Iam's label, said about 50 of the approximately 220 people who work there were on duty when the weather radio blasted an alarm.

They all went to a designated shelter away from the outside walls.

"Our tornado procedure worked exactly as it was supposed to," Brown said as she surveyed a scene that was still without electricity about 10 a.m. Thursday.

The plant is the Aurora area's largest employer, and Brown was intent on getting back into work mode. She had no dollar estimate yet on total damage.

"Hopefully, we'll be back in production by tonight, but it's too early to tell that yet."

Having watched the approaching storm from her Grand Island home about 12 hours earlier, she said it wasn't easy to turn her thoughts to what's ahead.

"It's always a little gut-wrenching when you see it," she said. However, "I already knew that everybody was safe because I talked to them before I got there."

Across the highway, at least 20 people in the Juzyks' yard, including two of Jeff Juzyk's brothers and members of their church, Pleasant View Bible, piled up debris as the Nebraska State Patrol and others from law enforcement ranks tried to keep traffic moving.

"Some things are lost," Jeff Juzyk said, "but it's a matter of picking up, cleaning up and moving on."

At City Hall, Aurora Mayor Marlin Seeman was relieved about the absence of injuries.

"We were very fortunate," he said.

Seeman described how the tornado "lifted and disintegrated" just a few miles away just when it seemed that its arrival was inevitable.

"That's close enough for me," he said.

As an option to dwelling on two tornadoes in two years, area residents could consider there had been nothing comparable in their county since the 1980s. Or they could draw some encouragement from the fact the second one missed Aurora by a wider margin than the first.

"It's nothing I can control," Jeff Juzyk said. "I'm not going to move because of tornadoes."

Reach Art Hovey at 402-473-7223 or ahovey@journalstar.com.