The morning started out normally. I was actually having a pretty good day at work and because numbers were so low I was going to get a half day and leave at 1:00!
1:00 rolled around and we had been watching the sky get blacker and blacker for the past 15 minutes. The rain started pelting down and the winds started picking up. I obviously knew that I wasn't leaving and neither was my co-worker who has infant twin girls. As the winds starting howling through the door in our room and the windows started shaking we decided it was probably best if we take all of the babies into the bathroom in case something happened. Right about this time the lights started flickering on and off. They did that about 3 times before they went out for good! Once we were in the bathroom the tornado sirens went off, so we did the right thing.
One of our babies mom's was there also because she comes every day at lunch to feed her. By this point there are 4 adults and 6 babies crammed into a small bathroom! Not to mention our flashlight died and the new batteries wouldn't work in it either. I was sitting in the bathtub with 2 of the older babies, who were completely terrified of the thunder and the dark. I was using my cell phone for light. It helped a little, but one baby was clinging to me for dear life!
All the while I was getting worried about Jacob. He had sent me a text saying that I needed to stay at work. He and Seth were at Wal-Mart and part of the roof had started to come off, so it was raining in Wal-Mart. I texted a few more times and was shooting up prayers for their safety and for our's. I finally heard back from him. My texts took awhile to go through because they were all corralled into the back of Wal-Mart after 1 employee went running through the store yelling, "CODE BLACK!!!" Haha!
Anyway...we were in the bathroom for probably a half an hour and the storm had passed. The toys out on the playground were all pushed up against fences and one of the big climbers was knocked on it's side.
Jacob and Seth came back to the house to make sure things were okay here. We still had power and the only near fatality was one of my potted plants. Our basement was okay too. Just a little bit of water.
I left work at 1:45 and just had warned me the streets were flooded. They flood bad when it rains here because we have an old sewer drainage system. Yep. I drove through some huge puddles. I probably could have swam down our street. Good ol' Lola got me home...although I did almost hydroplane past the driveway!
The news said we didn't have a tornado, just VERY damaging straight line winds. Taylorville and another small community were hit the worst. I drove around later in the afternoon to check out the damage. I didn't hear of any injuries and I'm extremely thankful for God's protection.
All of my pictures are up on Facebook, but here are a few.
A sign fell off one of the buildings up on the town square.
I thought this tree looked pretty cool. Just hanging on by a thread.
The high school football field was heavily damaged.
A big metal building landed on top of a house!
Back view
Back view
Front view
wow very scary indeed! It's specially hard when you are with children who don't understand - good job keeping a cool head and just doing what you knew to do!
ReplyDeletesorry about your poor plant, I know what that is like too ;)
love you, girl
Man, I would hate to see that if it was a tornado - those winds did enough damage! I agree with Kathy - good JOB! So glad no one got hurt!
ReplyDelete