Beware, this is going to be really long, it's just a way for me to share what I'm feeling about today. I never really thought that I would write a blog, but a few thoughts have been running through my head today that I thought I would share with the few of you who might actually read this. 3 years ago today our house was hit by a tornado. I can't believe it's actually been 3 years, it seems like yesterday in some ways. I can vividly remember so many details about that day, even before coming home to find my house in shambles from the tornado.
I'm a teacher and I was at school that day like I would be any Thursday (yes, it happened on a Thursday and I can remember that without looking it up). I remember looking on a weather website and seeing a line of strong storms moving through the Fort Worth area early that afternoon. By the time school was letting out, those storms began to pound our area. The principal made an announcement that we were dismissing a little early and teachers who did not have afternoon duties were allowed to leave. Most of the teachers decided to stick it out there, but I just couldn't bring myself to voluntarily stay in the school when I could be heading home. Looking back, that was a dumb idea, but what did I know? I remember it was raining and blowing so hard I could barely get my truck door open and there was absolutely no using an umbrella because it would have been demolished in a matter of seconds. I got out on the road and could barely see in front of me. I ended up behind a long line of traffic virtually stopped, about a mile from my school. We inched along and I eventually came upon the reason for our slow travel, an old barn-type building had blown into the road and everyone was having to make their way around it. After driving another mile, I came upon the interstate and found a spot to park underneath it along with a school bus and a few other vehicles until the storm finally passed. It actually didn't take that long, maybe 15 minutes of sitting, and we were able to move. From there until I came to my neighborhood, I saw relatively minor damage from the storm, a few limbs blown down, maybe the occasional sign, nothing to be concerned about.
I remember driving down the road leading to our housing addition and catching a glimpse of our neighbor's house. Our neighbors have a house that appears to be a 2 story, but in reality is only a one story, and the 2nd "story" on their house was completely gone, roof and everything. I was in total shock, for a moment I couldn't even see our house and just knew that it was completely gone. Finally there was a break in the trees and I was able to see our house for a moment and saw it still standing and looking to be in one piece. I pulled onto our road and had a good view of the side of our house closest to the neighbor's destroyed house. Our bedroom windows appeared to be broken and there was debris all over and around our house. I pulled into the driveway and of course we had no electricity so I couldn't park in the garage, I came in through the front door instead. At the time, Keith and I had only lived here for a year so we were very picky about taking our shoes off before walking on the carpet. I took mine off out of habit and made my way to our bedroom, before I even walked into the door, I could already see glass all over the carpet in the hallway. (Remember, I'm only wearing socks on my feet!) I walked into our bedroom and it was completely destroyed. Both of our windows were broken, glass was everywhere, embedded in the sheetrock, all over the carpet, our bed, etc. Our blinds were completely ruined, the glass on our TV screen was actually chipped from something hitting it. We also had shingles and 2x4's from our neighbor's house, all over our bedroom. Upon seeing our bedroom in such chaos, I called Keith immediately. Of course he didn't answer his cell phone, so I left him a message. At the time I didn't know it, but later that evening when we actually listened to this voice mail, I sounded out of control and very frantic. I called him a second time and he answered and I remember telling him to come home immediately, our house had been hit by a tornado. I told him the state of our neighbor's house and what I had seen so far of our's and he said he was on his way. I then made my way around the rest of the house to check for any more damage. The master bathroom actually had a 2x4 that came through the roof and then through the wall of the bathroom, leaving a hole atleast 18 inches big. Our guest bathroom had about 2 inches of water standing in the floor. Other than glass being everywhere, there wasn't any other damage to the inside of the house. I went to put my shoes on to go outside and check things out and realized the bottoms of my socks were covered in glass and of course soaking wet. Thankfully I wasn't cut. Our neighbors from across the street were standing in my yard when I went outside and they asked if everything was ok and had I been home when it hit. She had been home, but thankfully had made it to a closet with her son before the storm hit. Plus, their house only suffered very minor damage, thank goodness. Her husband went to the neighbor's house to see if anyone there was home because obviously their house was in very bad shape and if someone had been in there, they could have been seriously hurt. Thankfully, they were both still at work. We then examined my house and discovered several spots on the roof where 2x4's and other boards had "stabbed" through the roof leaving holes. There was a 10 foot long board "stabbed" into the ground about 20 feet from our house. Who knows what kind of damage that would have done had it actually hit the house.
The emergency crews began arriving at this point. They broke down the neighbor's door to check and see if anyone was home and needed assistance (no one was), they checked with me to see how we were, and then made their rounds to the other houses with damage. By this time, Keith had made it home, but it took him awhile to actually get to our house because of all the traffic beginning to accumulate from gawkers along with emergency workers. He took the tour of the damage to the house and then climbed on to the roof with a friend of our's who had come to help. They assessed the damage, were given some makeshift materials, and started covering up the holes in the roof to keep out any future rain. Our home builder came by after I called to see what he could do to help us get our house back in order. Not that it was his responsibility at all, but he is such a nice man, that I knew he would help where he could. He brought plywood and with that and some tarps from our neighbor we were able to board up our bedroom windows. He also gave us a list of the people who originally built our house for us to call and get them to come out and fix things. He even pulled some strings and had the window guy out to our house the very next day to replace our broken windows. That was totally awesome and so helpful. He's a wonderful guy.
At this point, you would not believe the traffic winding through our small neighborhood. The police eventually had to block off the roads because people were clogging up our streets terribly. Our neighbors whose house was demolished had made it home by now and you could see the devastation on their faces. They had moved into their house more recently than we had and now it was unliveable. A news crew showed up and interviewed them and later that night a moving/restoration company had also showed up and were salvaging what they could and taking it for storage. By this time, we had the holes in our roof temporarily covered and tarps covering our windows, so we were doing ok. Our neighbors from across the street went out and picked us all up some pizza and we sat around our kitchen eating in the candlelight. Once everyone was home for the evening, Keith and I spent several hours calling our family to let them know what happened. Our mattress was soaked and cut with glass from our windows, so we had to sleep on the full sized guest bed. 2 people sleeping on a full sized bed isn't all that comfortable to begin with, but when one of those people is 6'5", it is pretty much impossible. We ended up putting the mattress on the floor in the living room and slept half on the bed, half on the floor. At about 5 am, the electricity came back on, we weren't sleeping much anyway, so we got up and turned on the news. We saw the funniest thing that morning, we still talk about this to this day. A Fox 4 News reporter was in our neighborhood talking about the tornado and the damage it had done. He was standing next to a pile of bricks that was once a mailbox and talking about how this tornado had even taken down this brick mailbox. Keith and I died laughing, that mailbox had been a pile of bricks since before we had moved out there, so it definitely wasn't caused by the tornado. Too funny! Once it was daylight, we drove around our neighborhood surveying the damage. One house had their chimney completely broken off and it was laying in their yard, another's front porch columns had been blown down, several small storage buildings were completely destroyed, multiple houses had been stripped of their shingles, one house had 2 RVs and they had both blown over and into each other, and there was countless debris everywhere. We learned that day that a man had falled off the roof of a neighbor's house and broken his back the night before. He had to be airlifted to a Dallas hospital. One neighbor just trying to help an elderly neighbor out by patching his roof. Another neighbor told us about their back porch grill being blown into their son's bedroom window and totally destroyed his room due to all the glass and water damage. Thankfully no one was in there at the time.
It took the entire day on Friday to just pick up the debris in our yard. We still to this day find the occasional shingle or scrap of wood in the yard. The insurance adjuster along with the window man also came that day. I know a lot of people have a lot of problems with their insurance companies and we definitely have some gripes about the process it took to eventually get the check to cover all of the damage, and we were thankful we had enough in savings to cover alot of this upfront before finally getting the check. Our insurance adjustor was very nice and helpful. He was very thorough and more than fair with everything. We ended up having a claim for close to $20,000 in damages. We had to get an entire new roof, a new central heating and air conditioner unit, a new bed, new carpet in our bedroom, new blinds for the new windows, new sheetrock in the bedroom and bathroom, of course everything had to be repainted. We were not completely moved back in to our bedroom until June, 3 months later! I am so thankful that we did not have a baby during that time. It was very challenging and frustrating. I am so thankful that God helped us through it and keeps us from constantly worrying that something like this will happen again. And if it does, I know that He will still be there for us. Thanks for letting me get this "out there".
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