So the other day we made it through a tornado. I am not a fan....at all.
The photo above is right after the line passed. The sun was a nice thing to see. (View of back/side yard, taken from the deck, looking west.)
It's weird, because the day before everybody was talking about this big storm on the way. I was happily off of work on a Friday night for once, and our only plans were to go through the Catholic church's drive through fish fry for dinner. (Is that some sort of Kentucky phenomenon? Because I don't remember churches doing that in AZ during lent.) It's a huge thing. Cars line up and circle huge church buildings, where somebody with a radio is taking orders and then by the time you slowly drive around to another area your order is done. Now we don't observe or have anything to do with lent, but I tell you what....we look forward to it because it smells SO GOOD. - This coming from somebody who doesn't like fish.
However, we didn't have fish for dinner on Friday.
Earlier in the morning, I was having second thoughts on sending Matthew to school. Mike and I had both been tracking a huge storm that was on the way, and it was supposed to hit between 4 and 5:00. During the time that Matthew is on a bus, coming home from school. He had already been absent one day earlier this week because of some asthma issues, so I was hoping to not miss another day of school.
Only around lunch time I was starting to wish I had kept him home. I just had a gut feeling. I fought that feeling for awhile and decided I would see how things were going by the time I had picked up Megan and Trevor, who go to school much closer to our house and have a release time before the storm was due to hit. By the time they got out of school, I had talked via texting with several of my friends who have been through this before. One said, "I have not seen anything like this since I was about 7 years old. I'm pretty nervous."
I was also nervous when somebody at work had texted me that when they went to McDonald's to get some iced tea, that the people from the show Storm Chasers were in our town. THAT can't be good.
I still fought with myself because I was trying really hard not to give into fear, because I have let that dictate too many things in my life. There is irrational fear that prevents you from actually LIVING your life, and fear that is good, normal and healthy. That's the fear that you listen to. Which I did this time, but I really did struggle with what was the best thing to do here. I went and got him. I didn't' want to worry about him being on a bus on the interstate, miles away from our house when this storm hit. I was actually pretty surprised that the school hadn't closed early considering neighboring counties had sent their kids home early.
As soon as I got to the school, there was a solid line of moms there to pick up their kids. We drove home, and I checked the radar. Already the weather alarm clock thingie was going off. I don't like that sound. It startles me every single time. Plus I think this is the very first time in my life I have actually heard the emergency broadcast system in the works. It didn't say, "This is a test."
The boys were bringing the turtles downstairs while I brought in cases of water from the garage.
We all came downstairs into our basement room, turned on the TV, and had Mike on IM watching the storm with me. We watched as red blobs showed where it was headed. Which was really scary as you hear the people on the news telling you exactly where the center of the storm was....it was in Indiana, then crossing the river into Kentucky, then Rabbit Hash....and you start hearing these places that are familiar with you. There were four cells that converged about five miles from here. It was heading our way and I kept hearing Mike on IM, the radio and the news telling people in our area to get into a basement now. We all sat in the farthest corner of our basement, which is the laundry room that has a concrete wall on one of the sides. Far away from the two windows that we do have in this room.
I heard the sirens. (Another noise I don't like, especially when it is still outside.) The rain hadn't started, and the entire outside was green. It was weird. Just green and still. Then rain, then wind. When we were in the laundry room I could hear the top of the house creaking. For what seemed like 10 minutes all we could hear was creaking and popping. It sounded like somebody was taking the top part of the house and wringing it out like a wet towel. You could almost feel it swaying. I just kept hoping I wasn't going to hear the 'train' noise that everybody says is the worst. If it sounds worse than what I heard, I hope to never hear that sound. Just a solid 10 minutes of loud noise, and then pounding hail. Apparently this was slow moving and circled around here for a bit.
I was texting a few of my friends who were also in their basements, or some who were stuck at Kohl's, in customer service without knowing what was going on. Everybody had been sent to the back of the store and the power had gone out. (Our power stayed on thank goodness.)
It felt like forever, and the kids did really well. Megan was on the phone with one of her friends who had called scared to death because she was home alone. Trevor was visibly nervous, and Matthew seemed like he was actually having fun because he was playing on a DS and working on a bottle of Gatorade.
Which actually, I am happy that was Matthew's experience this time because later I found out that buses from his school hadn't made it out in time. One bus stopped at the firehouse and all of the kids went into the safe area in there, another bus had stopped at a residence and brought a bus load of kids into a basement, and several other buses including Matthew's stopped at the high school and went into the safe areas there. The kids on those buses didn't get home until 6:00. I felt good that I had Matthew, but felt terrible for all of those other kids, and for parents who were scared and wondering where their children were. (We did get texts and emails from the school that the buses were not on the road and that the kids were all inside.) But whew....I was glad I had all three of mine in the house. The timing of this storm was terrible. Not that there is a good time, but between 4 -5 is when so many people are out on the road, or out after getting off of school or work.
It was finally over at our house. But at this point I was getting texts from a good friend of mine that it was hitting her house. She was in the basement with her two kids. I thought it was interesting how much we all kind of relied on our phones and texting to keep in touch during this whole thing. Power was out at Kohl's for the rest of the night, so I was texting my friends there letting them know if the sirens had stopped, or what we were experiencing. It was hard to know what we had just been through, and then hearing from somebody else who was going through it at that moment. I was relaying what I was hearing on the news, who were giving moment by moment updates that the tornado had touched down on the interstate near the house, and going by landmarks to gauge where it was. The texting was a pretty cool tool.
Also, when I wasn't in the laundry room, I was on IM with Mike who was getting us through the whole thing. I felt so bad as I'm sure he was scared and frustrated that he was away and couldn't do anything. This is nature though, and even though you can predict a path, you can't predict what will happen.
We were lucky. A town so close to here was hit really bad. Two of my coworkers lost their houses (one was stuck at Kohl's while her teenage son was in the basement under a mattress while the house was torn from above him. I can't imagine getting texts during that and feeling so helpless.) Her house is entirely gone. A whole neighborhood was destroyed, barns, vehicles.....it is a mess. I had heard that they brought in dogs to start looking for missing people. One of my friends had found out that her friend was killed. The trees look like broken sticks. It's so surreal. I'm not used to seeing this stuff first hand like this. Living in AZ, this was always something on the news, far away. I've been through several storms of possible tornadoes where the sirens go off and you kind of grumpily say "Tornado siren. Damn." and it puts a dent in your day. Never anything like this. It's crazy.
Of course we were lucky. All we've had to do is retrieve garbage cans and try to match random siding picked up from the yard to whatever house was missing a piece. Our house did well. Nothing that I could see damage wise. I secretly did wish that our neighbor would have lost some of their yard art though. lol.
- and now we have a cool story to tell. Plus a little bit of cleanup of water bottles, crackers, legos and army men downstairs.
No comments:
Post a Comment