For starters, our family is fine. Our home is fine. Our friends are physically safe, even if some of them have had catastrophic property loss. Thank you all so much for the numerous calls, e-mails, text messages, Facebook messages, etc. We are so amazingly blessed! Good Friday is a day that everyone in town will remember. And to be completely honest, I don't even want to write this post. My family (from CA) is already questioning our sanity for staying here, and was already given a good scare. Plus the added fact that I don't really care to put it down in writing. But, I want to try to illustrate what this day was like for us. Some of you may have caught snippets on the news, but sometimes that just doesn't do it justice.
About five years ago, Mike and I moved baby Andrew to Murfreesboro, TN. (Population 100,575 as of last year.) Although Tennessee can, and occassionally does, have tornadoes, we've been fairly lucky. We've had to hide in our 'safe place' about 2 or 3 times since moving here. I'd gotten pretty comfortable with the idea that the tornadoes that you see on TV simply don't happen here. The fact that most Rutherford County homes have no basements, nor storm shelters was just an accepted thing around here. The county sits on bedrock, and basements are just not part of the equation. When weather gets bad, you go to your 'safe place'...in our case, the hall closet underneath the stairwell. Some others go to bathrooms located in the middle of their home. Again, this is just an accepted fact that many of us deal with when the spring storms roll in.
On Good Friday, this entire city was turned upside down. *Sidenote* I will spare you the overdramatization in this post. If I say that a home was completely leveled, it was. If I say it had moderate damage, that's what it was. I'm going to do my best to not embellish things.
Saying that, experts are now saying that the tornado's path (now classified as an EF-4 tornado) traveled a path of 23.25 miles. That is insane! Prior to this, I understood that an average tornado would go for a mile or two, and then die out. It lasted 26 minutes and destroyed about 100 homes, and damaged approximately 800. The official numbers state that two people are dead (although I've heard accounts of three more bodies being removed from a home), and about 58 hospitalized. I think there are still three people in critical condition, one of which being the husband/daddy of the two who died.
Here is a link to the google map showing the path the tornado took. http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=110609751342067139763.00046746bc93ded9717cb&source=embed&ll=35.8501,-86.439743&spn=0.389593,0.615234&z=11
According to the map, our house sits about 4,000 feet outside of the tornado's path, although the most visible damage is right in the center of the path. We live in the Berkshire Subdivision in the Blackman Community. We live on the corner of Roxbury Dr. and Middlebury Dr. Thankfully none of us were home. Our neighbor who lives five doors down, took this photo from his back porch:
Where were we? Well, Mike was at work where they are blessed to have Safe Rooms. (Not to be confused with your 'safe place'). Safe Rooms are built to withstand an F-5 tornado. The rest of the building can be blown completely away, and that room will still stand. Lucky him, and smart thinking on Verizon's part. They have 1,000+ employees to protect.
The kids and I were at a friend's house across town. For those of you who know Murfreesboro, we were near State Farm in a subdivision (DeJarnette and Mission Ridge). Chandra, Meredith and I were there with ten...yes TEN...kiddos, ages seven and younger, and three of them being babies (oldest one being mine...just turned one last week). Mike called me around noon to tell me that there were severe storms heading into town. He sounded rather serious about it all, and being that he's a bit of a weather geek, I decided to clarify. I asked him how bad it looked, and he said it was a Tornado Warning. Those are words I never want to hear.
*Quick severe weather lesson* Tornado Watches mean that conditions are favorable for the development of a tornado in the general 'watched' area. So basically, keep an eye out. Tornado Warning means (for a lack of better terms) save yer ass. This is where the radar detects all the key elements that can become a tornado at any second, or when a tornado is actually spotted on the ground. So, when Mike told me it was a Tornado Warning...well, I felt a little ill. A few minutes later, he sent me a text message to say that they were being sent to the Safe Rooms and that the call center's calls were being routed to another call center.
We flipped on the news for live coverage, amazing storm trackers, and street-by-street activity. I could see on the map that Blackman community was getting nailed, and the other moms looked at me. At that point I didn't really care about my house, or our belongings, I just wanted my neighbors to be safe. As it got closer to us, we prepped Meredith's bathroom for an impromptu storm party. None of us wanted to be in there with ten little ones, but there wasn't much of an option. We put as many of the kids in the bathtub, and the adults/babies sat on the floor, toilet, and side of the tub. At one point, all three adults were on the front porch, attempting to contact our hubbies, who were in various parts of Rutherford County. Plus, we wanted to see if anything was going on. While on the porch, we saw the tornado and the tornado siren at MTSU was going off. It looked so close and was bigger than what my neighbor's photo looked like. The sound of the tornado siren made me want to throw up, because it was confirming what was before my eyes. I thought for sure it was on top of my friend Stacie's neighborhood (which is one subdivision over from where we were). I went to the bathroom to make sure all the kids were still there, and to take cover. Moments later, I heard an explicative and then the front door slam. The other moms just saw debris flying in the tornado, and they had had enough fun.
What we later found out was that this was the same section of tornado that claimed the lives of the 30 year old mom and her 9 week old baby. They lived on Haynes Dr, near Sulpher Springs Rd, and this section of town suffered the worst damage. Original reports stated that she was trying to leave with the baby to escape the storm. They thought this because the baby was in the carseat. The husband was in the hospital with a broken back, and officials thought that he was trying to stop them from leaving. The news tonight stated that the husband is now able to recount the day's events, and it is truly horrifying. They were in their safe place...both adults on top of the carseat. The husband's last memory before blacking out was being lifted in the air by the tornado and looking down on his wife and baby, who were still on the ground of their safe place.
The baby was later found in the middle of the street, and the mom was located in another person's backyard. Both were dead on arrival.
When I found out these details tonight, I finally cried. It was so much easier to blame their deaths on a mistake. It was comforting to think that they couldn't possibly have done everything right and still suffered in such a horrible way. I cried the cry that was a few days overdue. I cried for the close calls that we had. I let down my guard for that short time and stopped being 'fine'. Every single place that equated to our daily lives was so close to being hit. Our home, Mike's work, my work (it touched down just across the street from my work), and the place where I sought shelter with my children. All the fear that I had that day -- fear for our safety, fear of not knowing which kid to grab if a tornado actually did hit Meredith's house, fear for our friends (talk radio confirming that their subdivisions had been hit), phone lines being overwhelmed, text messages going through at will. It was so frustrating not knowing, and talk radio had only preliminary reports of damage. I knew people from every part of town that had been hit. Where do you start? I drove by friends' houses on the way home as they were on the way and phone service was so spotty. Plus, we were detoured several times as emergency crews were blocking off the worst hit areas.
A trip that would normally be 20 mintues, took us an hour and a half to make. We came home to a house without power, but finally got it back just before 8pm. (Remember, this all started around noon).
The aftermath is where it started to set in. Seeing photos of damage, seeing it firsthand, helping to clean up the brokenness that was once someone's home...it starts to sink in. There are so many stories and so many miracles. Everyone has a story, and the more I hear, the more I am in awe that only 2 (maybe 5) people died. I can't tell you how many people measure the closeness of destruction in terms of "it was this many yards away from my house!" Not miles guys, yards.
Our church went out and started tag teaming church members' homes that were destroyed. I was able to help at one house on Doe St (off of John Rice Blvd). It's featured in the news story in the following link (the one with the teenage kids at home alone, and with the red car that was thrown in the house): http://www.fox17.com/newsroom/top_stories/wztv_vid_5556.shtml To be in someone's house in this state just takes your breath away: the damp smell, the mud sprayed on walls, the shattered glass and insulation everywhere. In this family's case, at least there were items that could be saved. The house itself will be bulldozed and rebuilt. The sad thing is knowing that there were homes that suffered far more damage than this.
Clean up will take weeks, and I doubt memories of that day will fade. Today we had a severe thunderstorm that became a Tornado Watch. It passed over us without incident, but it caused a lot of anxiety just the same. I'm not sure if I'll ever view a thunderstorm or hailstorm again without some heart palpitation paired with a 'what if'.
Here is a video from YouTube that we showed at church on Easter Sunday. The song is Praise You in This Storm by Casting Crowns. The photos are from various parts of Murfreesboro. *Warning* if you are my mommy or daddy, you can't watch this. It makes me shake. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_vboJmpx6w
4 comments:
Kristen, thank you so much for writing that.. I know how hard it must have been, but Ive been wondering how you were holding up. I totally understand the anxiety. We lived in Mboro for 10 yrs and endured many "hidings." My biggest fear (and I actually had nightmares for YEARS of this) was that Zack would be lifted from my arms and into the tornado while we were hiding. This is part of what made us move back home to Knoxville. I feel God literally pushed us out of Mboro..for reasons other than that of course, but I would say 85% being THAT. In the 10 yrs we lived there, we endured countless warnings..but like you said, they were part of life. It seems like its getting worse there every year and becoming more violent and destructive. :( I totally understand the feelings you felt when you were hiding.. I felt those same ones each time. Hang in there... and I hope you are ok...Im here if you want to talk :)
Very well said! It is very hard to write all of your emotions down, I agree. IT was a crazy, crazy time and while I was freaking out a ton... I still kept thinking it was not that bad.... until I saw the tornado.... then it was another story. I am so thankful we are all OK! Hoping and praying that is the closest any of us see a tornado!
Oh, I still would take Friday over an earthquake....... not Mark though!! Something about the idea of warning keeps me a little more at ease..... of course it is all bad!!
That was scary stuff. I have never been as close to one as we were in Memphis a few weeks back and the cells not working, people being out in it, all of it is pretty darn scary. ((hugs))
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