(no subject)
Around 2 am this morning, a class 3 tornado cut a swath through the outskirts of my city and into an adjoining town, Newburgh. It leveled a mobile home community where Don and Rob, our best friends, live. For the first hour or so afterwards, the television stations focused almost exclusively on damage to the local horse racing track (structural damage, and four barns were flattened...not sure how many horsies that would be), but no one was able to get -in- to the mobile home community to get any footage until quite a bit later. The power company people said that over 25,000 homes lost power. We couldn't reach Don/Rob on either of their cell phones.
The news reports just got worse and worse. Reporters were saying things like seeing lots of mobile homes on top of others, that the ones nearest the lake were blown into the lake. When the phone finally rang, and it was Don, and they were okay, it was the best thing I've heard in a long...long time. They were asleep when the storm hit, and their dog woke them up just before the tornado came through. Being without power afterwards when they called, they didn't know the scale of the damage, just that everything they could see was wrecked. The road leading to their community was completely filled with dozens and dozens of emergency vehicles, and that was the only light they had aside from their flashlight. The field next to them was where the life-flight helicopters were landing, and he said it was a constant stream of landings and take-offs. The home next to them is completely gone except for the deck, and a tree pierced their trailer and demolished their tool building, but no one in Don's home was hurt. Don's ex, who lives in the same community, was at a club with friends during the storm, and the body of the mother of one of those friends was found face-up in a ditch hundreds of feet from their trailer, which was torn in half. I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like, finding your mother like that.
Don was halfway (if not completely) in shock, but as soon as he, Rob and their kids get evacuated, they're getting together with Wayne to finance a home with a solid foundation. He doesn't keep his kids every weekend, and this happening on one of those weekends shook him to the core.
It's six am, and the sound of sirens going by on the interstate is still constant. The ambulances are going to the triage area, loading up, taking folks to the hospital and going back nonstop. It's getting light.
The news reports just got worse and worse. Reporters were saying things like seeing lots of mobile homes on top of others, that the ones nearest the lake were blown into the lake. When the phone finally rang, and it was Don, and they were okay, it was the best thing I've heard in a long...long time. They were asleep when the storm hit, and their dog woke them up just before the tornado came through. Being without power afterwards when they called, they didn't know the scale of the damage, just that everything they could see was wrecked. The road leading to their community was completely filled with dozens and dozens of emergency vehicles, and that was the only light they had aside from their flashlight. The field next to them was where the life-flight helicopters were landing, and he said it was a constant stream of landings and take-offs. The home next to them is completely gone except for the deck, and a tree pierced their trailer and demolished their tool building, but no one in Don's home was hurt. Don's ex, who lives in the same community, was at a club with friends during the storm, and the body of the mother of one of those friends was found face-up in a ditch hundreds of feet from their trailer, which was torn in half. I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like, finding your mother like that.
Don was halfway (if not completely) in shock, but as soon as he, Rob and their kids get evacuated, they're getting together with Wayne to finance a home with a solid foundation. He doesn't keep his kids every weekend, and this happening on one of those weekends shook him to the core.
It's six am, and the sound of sirens going by on the interstate is still constant. The ambulances are going to the triage area, loading up, taking folks to the hospital and going back nonstop. It's getting light.