My children went to bed at their usual school-night bedtime. And my husband and I were eager to watch a movie that we've been waiting to see for quite some time - #parenthood
I made myself an herbal tea and my husband started up the XBOX - and there was thunder rumbling in the background.
Within a minute of sitting down, my phone's alert system was going bonkers. A sound that was very different from my usual alerts that usually ping.
There was a tornado warning for my county.
I'm not sure if I've ever saw a tornado warning for our small town - there have been some 'watches' over the years. So, I posted a quick message on Facebook to see if there was a glitch because, we weren't even aware of a serious storm, let alone, a chance for a tornado to develop.
We then clicked on our local news station, who were interrupting the regularly scheduled program. And as soon as we tuned in, we heard our town, along with others, were told to take shelter...
Now people from other high storm cycle areas are probably thinking,
"yeah, so what?"
"What's the big deal?"
"We have storms all the time."
Yes. Yes, you do...
But we don't...
Flatter counties around us do.
But we live in the mountains. And have higher mountains surrounding those mountains.
So I ran upstairs, not too startling, so my children wouldn't get panicked. I told them to grab their 'things' (blankets, stuffed animals, etc) and we were coming downstairs due to the storm.
We headed to our basement, where I made a bed area with a bunch of pillows and blankets, under the stairs. We laid there for over an hour, with our hurricane lamps blazing, YouTube playing on the kindles, my phone streaming the news (because our satellite was now out), and our dog and hamster were also beside us.
We joked around, played some eye-spy, and my daughter inquisitively discussed the possible tornado arrival --this is a child who loves watching the Natural Disaster TV series, so she was sharing her insight.
The time seem to drag on, but yet, fly by. My insides were shaking, as I strategized in my head how I would protect my children, if the tornado happened to pass through...
But the smile never left my face...
I stayed connected with my neighbor, who was also with her family in their basement. She was updating me when my news stream buffered or kicked me off all together.
In my head, I kept picturing that moment in the movies, when you hear the sound of a freight train drive through and everyone has no choice, except hold on and put their hands with god...
Thankfully, that wasn't the case for us.
However, only about 5 miles from my home, wasn't so lucky.
The tornado hit our shopping district.
Concrete buildings were completely torn apart and U-haul trucks were thrown 1/4 mile from their resting place. Parts of Dicks Sporting Good Store were found 7 miles away and cars were completely flipped over.
(None of these photos are mine. They were used from our local news pages)
Thankfully, this occurred after 10:00 pm, when the stores were all closed or in the process of closing. And somehow, there wasn't any causalities. Not even injuries that resulted in emergency transportation to a hospital.
And the emergency personal were outstanding and quick with their response. They had buildings cleared and checked within a few hours.
We finally emerged from the safety of our basement to watch the devastation on the news. Our hearts heavy for the clean-up that will ensue over the next few months... But, feeling completely blessed and grateful that if the tornado took a slight change in course, residential areas would have been leveled down to the ground and lives would have been lost... And our home could have been one of them...
So, we all stayed awake way past a socially acceptable time frame, snuggling and reading stories... We never did watch our movie and my herbal tea sat on the counter until the next morning...
But, we were all just happy to be in our self-standing home...
Where, we were all together...
And safe.
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