Lucky

Monday, April 07, 2008

Thursday night was a very lucky night for us. R & I were in the living room just before 9:00 p.m. when we saw that there was a tornado warning for the next county. R got up and said we needed to take the animals and head to her sister's. I honestly thought we should wait it out but I said nothing and just helped get everyone out the door.

We stepped out the door to tornado sirens. We traveled to her sister's who lives a mere 1 1/2 mile from us.

We watched the television at her sister's; constantly vigilant to hear about any rotation. No news channel was breaking in with severe weather updates so we assumed all was clear. One news channel said the storm was in an area well past our home so we prepared to head back. Just as we were preparing to leave we got a call from a close friend asking if we were ok. She said she heard on the news that a mobile home park near our home was hit by a tornado. We of course knew nothing of this.

We gathered the animals and headed home. We turned on our road but we were stopped short just two homes away from ours. Power lines and downed trees were blocking the road. We couldn't even see our place because of the trees. We could smell something burning. The people gathered in the road couldn't see any further than we could.

We had no idea if our home was even standing. Needless to say I freaked the fuck out.

After making several inquiries into the condition of the neighboring streets we decided to go the back way to our house. It was probably the most agonizing few minutes of my life. We finally made it to our home to discover it was in fact still standing and while there was some damage, it was in pretty good shape.

We checked on neighbors and assured the firemen we were ok. We decided to stay elsewhere due to reports of the possibility of more severe weather headed our way and we wanted to wait until we could asses the damage in the light of day.

We checked into a local hotel with the animals. We spent most of the night watching the news to see if we were going to be hit by more bad weather. I think we slept a few hours.

We were back at the house early Friday morning. The damage looked worse in the light of day but compared to the damage of others in our area we were incredibly lucky.

We didn't lose a single tree unlike many of our neighbors. We lost only one big limb. A big limb that ended up on the other side of the tree instead of landing on my car as it should have.

Our insurance adjuster was out Friday afternoon and she said we should be expecting a check this week.

The video of the tornado being used by local and national media was taken at a dealership less than three miles from our home.

The mobile home park that was severely devastated is maybe a 1/4 mile from us.

We could have been hit so much harder than we were and truly so many things should have gone differently such as leaving the house when we did to coming back when we did.

We were truly lucky in all of this.