Last Friday night, March 2nd, Josh had been out with some friends and I stayed home because I had been sick the last couple days. Becuase I was homesick Josh decided not to stay out late and come home to be with me. By 12AM Friday night, we were fast asleep.
Around 2:30am I am awaken by a really loud noise outside... I shake Josh awake, "baby there's something going on outside, I think it's a tornado". It took us a minute to process what was happening. We got our bearings and then jumped into our half bath across the hallway with our puppy Stryder. The power was out, I had grabbed my phone and started to call a few people just to make sure they were ok and to warn them of a potential bad storm coming their way. I called my mom from the bathroom at 2:45 in the morning and let her know we were ok... I'm sure the phone call wasn't what she expected to get that morning, but I wanted to make sure my family knew we were ok - We had no idea how bad the storm was or how far it went. My phone call started like this, "Hey Mom, I just wanted to let you know Josh and I are ok... However, I think we just had a tornado at our house."
The noise was as loud as a freight train, but only lasted 90 seconds, tops!
Maybe 10 minutes later the worse of the storm seemed to be over, it was still raining but we decided to go outside to see what happened and what we saw, we'll remember forever...
Tree limbs down everywhere, 50' trees uprooted laying on the side, a limb pierced the roof of our front porch, and my car had a smashed in windsheild ... the worse of the storm occured in front of our house; we had large trees, maybe 3' around down in the road and in our driveway. And that is what we saw at 3:00 am, what we saw the next morning was 20 times worse than what we saw in the dark just a couple hours earlier. Our neighbor directly across from us had a tree that landed in the front of their house and just a quarter of a mile down the damage was worse than at our house...
Most of the 6' privacy fence was knocked over by limbs or just really strong winds, a branch came through our upstairs guest bedroom knocking over a TV and the table it was on, another branch came through our pantry and somehow smashed our washing machine, the whole back and front yards were covered in debris and someone else's roof landed on ours and put a couple holes through it - the sight was overwhelming! Though the wreckage was pretty extreme, Josh and I both know it could have been a lot worse and we are thankful everyday that we only had the damage we did to our home and cars.
The next day we had a couple friends came out to help us start with the clean up. No one really knew what to expect, when we told them about what happened. One friend thought he was coming over just to do some yard work from some strong winds that came though the area... boy was he wrong! Apparently they had to go through a couple check points and around so many different emergency vehichles just to get to us.
More friends came out the next day, on Sunday, to start the clean up. Josh and I will forever be greatful to the friends who have helped us with the disaster relief. It's not every day we face a natural disaster but we're certinaly thankful for those who came out, no questions asked. It was a lot to tackle and we could not have done it without our friends hard work and kindness and Josh and I will never forget it. Though it will take a little while to get back to normal, thanks to them the recovery process is going a lot faster!
A crew came out the first day to help us tarp our roof, and a lady had asked me, "are you devestated?" I really didn't have to think about my answer... because I knew I wasn't. Yes, it sucks it happened to us, however both Josh and I knew we were very blessed that we only had minor damages and we were all safe. Thankfully, it is all just stuff and it can be replaced. And I believe this experience has made Josh and I stronger, as people and as a family.
I'm glad you put this in print. Experiences like this change us forever, mostly in good ways.
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