Well last weekend was an eventful one. We had several tornadoes actually touchdown
in the Midwest. The news said over
100! Not all of them were devastating,
large wind cyclones of doom but quite a few did cause some major damage. When we moved here folks said they had not
seen a tornado in Wichita for about 20 years or so…… I guess it was about due.
Saturday (the day of the big storm) was pretty laid back; we
got to talk to my brother, his wife, his new son and my parents through
Skype. Before we ended our visit, Dad yelled
through the laptop that there were tornadoes all over the Midwest. Stan moved his laptop in front of the TV so
that we could see. I told them not to
worry, we’ll be fine.
Around 9pm or so that same evening, I heard the tornado
warning alarm go off. Yes we have a citywide
alarm system which can be heard outside and all over Wichita. The sound is blaring and incredibly annoying
like the kind you set to wake up in the morning but way worse. The alarm has to be like that because the
sound means business, means you need to find shelter NOW.
Adam was upstairs getting ready for bed and I was downstairs
washing dishes. I went up to ask Adam
what in the world was going on. He went
online to check the weather updates and sure enough it advised us to go to the
basement and find safe shelter. We quickly
grabbed a flashlight, unplugged all the electronics we could (we did not want
to fry the computer if the power turned on and off suddenly) and went down to
our basement. We also grabbed some good
walking shoes just in case, at the time we didn’t know what to expect, we
wanted to be ready for anything.
At first, waiting out the tornado/ storm wasn’t a big
deal. We just watched the tornado pass
through our city block on Adam’s phone and played a game of Ingenious. I was winning in the beginning and then out
of nowhere Adam claimed victory; we are going to have a re-match.
We also talked about how we need to be more prepared for a
tornado, and what we should do when another hits the ground. We also joked about how it would be crazy if
the top half of our house were to blow away, and then stopped joking about it
because it made us feel uneasy.
Adam called his mom, to let her know we were okay and what
was going on. We kept her updated. The power went off for close to an hour. Although it was dark, we did not get much
sleep that night. Heavy rain beat
against our small basement window, and we saw flashes of light quickly
illuminate the room and we heard the wind violently smash against objects
outside.
Thankfully, the storm passed through our city block without
much damage at all. Unfortunately, other
parts of Wichita were not so lucky. At
church the next morning we heard stories of how devastating the storm was for
other people.
The first Monday after the tornado, I drove Adam to work and
all of the roads leading to his work were blocked off. There has been extensive damage down to the
buildings at his work, power lines are down, building roofs smashed in; Adam
has had two “tornado days” (basically “snow days”). That day we also went to the DOL to get a
Kansas state License Plate put on our car and had to wait close to an hour extra
for their computers to get back online, there server was down all morning
probably because of the storm.
The whole city is still recovering from the effects of the
tornado last weekend.
I wanted to share this experience to our family and friends
in Washington because Adam and I have never experienced anything like this in
our lives. In Washington you don’t
really need to worry about tornadoes, or heavy wind storms.
Also, it made me think about two important aspects in our
lives. We need to be more prepared and we
need to enjoy & love life now because it can change in a second. I am so thankful for my loving, supportive,
all around awesome husband, Adam, my calm during the storm. And I am thankful for all of our good family
and friends who care about our well-being.
I hope you all are safe and sound in your niche of the world,
thanks for reading!
