If you don't live in "Tornado Alley" you have no clue as to how scary it can be and the total devastation wrought upon an area if it is hit by an F3, F4 or God forbid F5 tornado.
Recently, Greensburg, Kansas was destroyed, and I do mean wiped out by a massive tornado. We don't get a weeks notice as to when a tornado is going to hit. If you are lucky you get about 15 minutes notice and then WHACK it is on top of you.
Sure, they sound sirens and the newscaster's are following the route but no one knows for sure where it will hit or how big it will be. Sure, they have a general idea of where it is tracking but where that sucker drops down out of the sky is a surprise to everyone.
I'm a chicken so the second they sound the alarms, I have my purse and dogs and I am down in the basement. We keep water, a first-aid kit and some canned goods down down there just in case the walls fall in and we are stuck for a few days.
But the kicker is.... you don't hear all the wailing, bitching and complaining like you did with Hurricane Katrina. Oprah doesn't rush in with the NFL and all the other $$ people to rebuild and wipe tears. We are on our own except for each other. And we manage to get the job done.
A couple of years ago a youth group I volunteered with sent about 50 boxes of books to a town whose library had been destroyed, along with most of the town.
In Greensburg not just a portion of the town was destroyed... it was the entire town. People are still unaccounted for. And this will happen in several other towns up and down Hurricane Alley each season. Also, to make things worse right now we are also under flood conditions. My backyard is a swamp but that goes back to a city engineering issue as well as the torrents of relentless rain we have had.
So tonight before you go to sleep please say a little prayer for those in Greensburg, Kansas and all the other towns that have been destroyed by these terrors of the sky.
Oh, and please toss in a prayer for those of use having to fill sandbags to keep our homes from washing away due to the deluge of rain.
Someone has pissed off Mother Nature and her wrath is hitting us all hard.
2 comments:
I know you posted this two years ago, but I know what you mean. My family and I just moved from Texas to Missouri. I lived through 4 tornadoes as a kid in Texas but these things seem to happen more in Missouri it seems like...
alanone88@yahoo.com
Something about being in a tornado makes me think its not the wind speed, its just this pressure deal. My ears and sinuses were popping so hard and shit was exploding everywhere, something about them is just evil.. just differrent. I live in tornado alley now, and the only time u will catch me in the middle of a hurricane warning is with a video camera and a 4 wheel drive vehicle on high land. But a tornado, forget it, i have friends in greensburg and the death toll was only low because they tell me the whole town took the outage route on the highway due to the 20 min warning they had, but it was mainly because of the way the clouds looked, just scary enough to scare a town into leaving.. You can watch tornados on TV and its neat, but when a big one is comin at you, all it is , is a wall , a brown and black wall moving 300 miles per hour sideways, and moving towards you at 20 miles an hour, and this sh it is evil.
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