Tornado

We had a tornado last night here in town and in the town next to us. It was an incredible experience. I have some pictures and will put some more later when I get them.


We were eating dinner at about 5:30 and Carrie texted us to tell us there was a warning out for one. She is our tornado watch queen and has a weather radio, so we told her to call if anything changed. About 15 minutes later she called and said that it had touched down in Novinger about 15 miles away and looked like it was headed towards us. It was getting kind of dark, then HUGE rain hit our house, and we decided that it would probably be best to go to the school. We got the girls into the van and went up to the school, with Hallie asking about 100 times why we were going to the school and what was happening. She got pretty scared and wanted to just be home. We got to the school and waited out the storm there. It was really rainy and dark, but not a whole bunch more than that. Garret is a fellow student and his wife was driving back from Colombia so he was trying to talk to her and got a few calls saying that his roof was gone. I have a few families that I home teach that live right next to him, so we all went out and jumped in the van and drove to that side of town.

About a mile away we had to get out of the cars and walk becuase the powerlines were all over the road, and I guess we weren't even supposed to walk in because there were some big gas leaks. This is a picture of someones shed smeared accross the trees there. You can sort of see the power lines leaning down there too all down the road. Here is one of about 3 that were lying on the ground.

The further down the road we got the worse it got. Down near where all the people are walking in the first picture is the turnoff onto the street that my families live on. We came around the corner that hooks right and saw that both my families houses were intact. But there were a whole bunch that weren't.

This first house I think was a two story home. I am not sure but it is missing the entire roof. It is #3 on my map for those who are interested. I don't know who lived there but it was a significant loss.
This next house was the kid that was with us at the school, his wife was coming home from work and he had his 2 dogs with him so everyone is ok. You can just see the corner of the other house on the left and the people in there said that you could feel the decompression of the air around them and heard all the windows blow in at the same time. The roof lifted off of that house and off of the next two houses to the left of the picture, plus the duplex to the left of house #3. These all settled back onto the houses but left big gaps between the walls and ceilings. They are going to have to be rebuilt.

This was one of the duplexes and a married couple that go to school with me live in down there. They were sitting down to eat dinner and study a bit when she decided to close the blinds in case things got really crazy and the glass broke from branches off the trees behind the house. They sat there for a little longer then decided to go to the bathroom. They were in there for about 5 seconds when the roof came off. The double doors in the back blew off and knocked the dinner table into the front room about 40 feet away. It knocked the back wall over so much that the fridge is the only thing holding it up at this point. It took the bedsheets off the bed, threw their dvd collection into the hall and pulled engagement pictures off the coffee table and landed them in the house across the street. It pulled the door off the pantry, but dinner is still on the counter. They got away without a single scratch. Not even a bruise. This is a picture of the bathroom where they were hiding minutes before we got there. This is also the front room, I feel bad cause we moved the table, but to get the door open. I spent the most time that night with these guys so I have the most pictures of them. They are half of house number #2 for those of you keeping track.

(this has taken longer than I thought, sorry if it is slow getting up but have spent tons of time getting these people dug out and settled) The weather right after the storm was ok, it rained a little and there was some lightning, but we were really blessed that there wasn't as much rain as we are having today. (we have a flash flood warning now, and another tornado watch two days after I started this)

The next door neighbors had a two story home, and we went there next. The cieling downstairs was buckled and had water running into the house itself. Half way up the stairs the drywall was gone off the wall on one side but not the other, and you looked right up the stairway into the clouds. We pulled all the stuff off the floor and into the garage that was in ok shape for the night. The little girls room upstairs had the roof and ceiling gone and the windows blown in, but the ceiling light and smoke detector were laying on the ground. There were no sign of any of these roofs either, I think they have officially smashed the wicked witch of the west somewhere. The pictures on the right of this paragraph are of the house across the street that got hit with the roof from either house #2 or or #1 (it is not on the version of gmaps that i used, but was there... obviously. There also was another house where the 5 is on the map that is newer too, but now i don't have pictures of it either.)


The next house is number 4 on the map. It was just smeared across the area. This stop sign got hit with something and I think the recliner wrapped backwards around the telephone pole is from house #4. We found a whole bunch of other weird stuff like that, but Chris has them on his phone and a video that we will put up here as soon as we get them.

They told us that it was an F2, but only because it only hit a few houses compared to some. They measured it at a half-mile across and called it a large dangerous tornado. These are only the homes that I worked around, there are whole other nieghborhoods with significant damage. There was a car dealership that had a few cars upside-down in thier lot, and the reast all were missing windows or had some other kind of damage. The little town of Novinger on the map there had 62 dwellings (small houses and trailer homes) demolished too. I think there were 3 fatalities and heard there were a few people hurt. But every single person from the neighborhood where I was came out without harm. More soon.