Tornados and other events

[eurydicebound]

Well, tornado season got off to a roll last week, in the vicinity of yours truly. Here at home, I pulled Will out of school early and we all went to hide in the bathtub, since the storm shelter was flooded. Oops. At David's school, he took off down two flights of stairs at a dead run to reach their tornado shelter in time in the CS building. Cue storm, rain, hail, and lots and lots of wind.

Resume scene. Danger has passed and the house is still standing, and the kids have been let out of the bathtub to comfort the dog. There is no power, but things are otherwise all right. The students come out of the CS building to the sight of their cars, with glass littering the parking lot and the roof of the concession stand from the football stadium liberally scattered across an entire row of vehicles.

Our car was three rows back. It lost three windows and has a whole bunch of little dents now from the landscaping gravel that was being stored on a pallet at the edge of the parking lot. It's really rather stunning what pebbles launched in 75+ mph winds can do.

http://www.lawton-constitution.com/ftpage/030504.pdf

That's got a picture of the parking lot David was in. The building pictured is where he has most of his classes. Our car was back behind the camera, if that makes sense.

I thought for a time that my trip to GTS was cancelled, but I've been able to make arrangements AND get my car repaired, so it's all good. Managed to make it happen for $400 rather than the $1200 plus everyone quoted me. Boo-ya.

Any way, the upshot of this is that I've been without internet since the day before that storm, and I'm now trying like crazy to get caught up. Glad to be seein' y'all again, though.

Comments

[winterhawk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, same here. I look at it this way: I've lived in California all my life, and during that time I've experienced one major earthquake (Loma Prieta, 6.8, in 1989, where I was less than 50 miles from ground zero) and dozens of minor earthquakes of the "oh, cool, the ground's shaking" variety. Most earthquakes don't cause major damage, and even the ones that do are often as not in some other part of the state (such as the one they had in Paso Robles a few months ago, which we felt as an "oh, cool" type quake up here).

They're just not scary anymore when you live with them that long. Now, tornados, on the other hand, or hurricanes--::shudder::--no, thanks!