March 2, 2012. An ordinary Friday, filled with hyper kids ready to get out of school for the weekend - can't say I blame them. Around 12, my mom starts texting me. She starts asking if I'm okay and if I'm still in school. I tell her I am and ask what's going on. She asks if we're in danger of the storms coming in. Storms? What storms? I jump on my trusty 'ole computer and look it up. Sure enough, it looks windy. My mom, however, is watching the national news. Where national affiliates have already sent crews to Louisville to cover the damage that they know is coming. Mom tells me this. Hmm, that sounds strange. We start to get worried as the rain picks up and as the sky darkens. It's unusually warm outside. We're getting reports of baseball-sized hail in some places. That's not good. But it's not tornado season yet; we'll be fine, right?
The day rolls on, and parents start coming in to check out their kids. My friend Monica comes in to get her 6 year old and walks down to the teens program to tell me where to go when I can get out of the building. I'm starting to take things seriously now. Hannegan and I make a plan for getting her kids if we go into tornado drill. The school makes a statement about what to do if the storms hit during dismissal, though they think we'll miss that window.
We don't.
5 minutes until I can kick all the kids out the door, the sirens go off. The wind has picked up again, as has the rain. We shuffle all the kids and any parents in the parking lot into the building and into our designated "safe zones." One of the kids grabs the class chinchillas so they will be safe and I grab paper and a pencil so I can record who we've got in there with us. We turn on a movie in there, because it just happened that there was a TV and a DVD in the room, so to distract ourselves from the storm. The lights flickered the whole time and, from the middle of the building, we could here the wind rattling all the windows. We got on our laptops ans tried to find out what was going on.
Eventually, things calmed down enough that people started to leave. We stayed with the kids that were left. Hannegan couldn't leave because the storm was headed toward her town. I decided to stay with her. During this time, we heard that Henryville High School had been hit while kids had been in the building and they weren't sure what was happening there. A few people started crying and had to leave. I stayed and tried to downplay everything and be the responsible adult. Because what else could I do?
About 4 o'clock (90 or so minutes in), we were told we could go and that we probably had about 20 minutes until the next storm hit. I live 3 minutes from work and my "safe house" that I was going to go to is right across from the school. My plan was go home, grab the 72 hour kits, a change of clothes for each of us, and our essential documents, and come back with plenty of time before the storm hit. I was halfway home (keep in mind, that's like 90 seconds) when the sirens went off again. It was crazy. The rain started pummeling my car and the wind was unbelievable. I dashed upstairs to find my stuff and came back out to head to the house. I couldn't stay where I was; our apartment is on the 2nd floor, and that's no place to be during a tornado. I literally sped past a cop, who waved me on as if saying, "Go faster and get out of here!" I had 2 bags on each arm and 2 backpacks on my back as I dashed into the house and ran down the stairs. I threw off my packs, jumped in a closet, and helped Monica with her two boys.
After several harrowing minutes of hearing the tempestuous winds and rain outside, the sirens went off, the winds died down, and we poked our heads out of the closets we'd found to hide in. We slowly crept to the TV to see if we were in the clear. We were, but it was unclear what that meant for now. As the night rolled on, it became apparent that the storms were past us, but that they had done a lot of damage. After everything calmed down, Deg was able to cross the bridge back from work and join us. We made lots of phone calls to family members to tell them we were safe. We then called friends in the area to see if they were okay. More damage reports came in, and we saw the footage of Henryville and Marysville. Those places are like 20 miles away, and they are beyond devastated. As it got dark and there were no signs of anything else happening, we all went home and tried to get some sleep after an incredibly harrowing day.
My next entry will be about the cleanup effort, and I'll show you some photos of the areas we've been working in.
This is a shot of the tornado as it landed down in Henryville.
This photo was taken near New Pekin. How terrifying must that be.
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