Disaster in our Hometown

Friends, let me start by saying Thank you to all who posted well wishes, and prayers on here and our facebook page. It is so heartwarming to know that you have people from all over showering you with love.

So, let me just tell you our story…

Early Wednesday morning, I got up with Shannon… helping him get his stuff ready for work. It was already rainy and yucky outside and I didn’t think *too* much of it. I had looked up the forecast the night before and saw that we might have bad weather, but I didn’t figure it would be more than normal.

Anyways, I was busy. Got my shower, had my devotion, prayer time, blog time, fixed breakfast for the younglings, laundry going… you know the normal routine.
At about 7 AM my mother texts me asking if I would like to bring the kids to her house since the storm could get bad. My mother is always OVERLY cautious about the weather, so I dismissed her caution, said we would be fine and went about my morning.
The weather progressed and I began to get a bit hesitant. I told the children to go ahead and get dressed and lay their shoes beside the door, JUST IN CASE we did end up going over to Grandma’s house.
I began to get out their school books, going on and then I see the wind start getting VERY strong. The children began to get a bit scared and I said that I would pull the van up directly in front of the porch so JUST IN CASE we had to leave, it would be right there and ready.
Time progressed a bit more.

All of a sudden the weather is horrible, winds and lightening and rain was POURING down.
I get a phone call saying that a tornado was coming straight toward my sisters house.
I dropped the phone and yelled for the kids to run to the van.
We swiftly made it to my mother’s house as hail began to fall all around us.
We were all a bit shaken and scared and I was terrified for my sister.
When the weather calmed down a bit I tried calling her but couldn’t get an answer. I drove to my mother’s work and asked if she was able to talk to her and she said she had.
The tornado went directly OVER my sisters home.
My stomach fell to my feet.
Thankfully she and my nephews were fine as were all her in-laws that she lives near.

Afterwards we found out that the tornado blew some of the roof off one of our schools, completely took the roof and awnings of a hometown bank. The tellers made it through safely by hiding in the vault. Praise the Lord!
Trees were uprooted everywhere, but it looked like things were going to be ok.

Later on, it started again. Things got so bad that many of us took shelter in our church basement. Keeping track of the weather by our phones and phone calls from others.

A second round of storms came through and a third…. our hometown was torn apart.
Lives were lost and homes were destroyed.
It wasn’t until midnight that the last of the storm warnings were over.
Wearily we made it back home in total darkness.
We had no idea what we would see come Thursday morning.

This picture was taken from a local man, of the high end ef3 that ripped over our mountain.

To be continued…