"Just Me"
July 30, 2010
Tornadoes
Friday, July 30, 2010 | 
Posted by
Anonymous
As I sat here the other day when the storms were all around us, by myself watching the flashing lights of lighting through my skylights and heard the roar, and feet the rumbling of thunder all around me, it brought me back to a day in my life I will never forget!
It's a day back in 1976 while I was with child and had 3-3year old children to watch over and protect, Mine!
If not for the days events, my life could have turned out much different and to think even today how bad it could have been, I thank God for getting us through it.
I had triplets and was with child as I said, and my house wasn't always picture perfect and my husband had a bit of O.C.D, and therefore couldn't handle when the house was not in order. Needless to say, children have toys and in this house, they had one room that went from the front of the house to the back of the house and in my estimation, was pretty orderly considering triplets and all their toys.
But anytime I was angry for being called out on something, I cleaned.. I'm sure my husband knew this and pushed my buttons, but it was what I did anyway. So if not for that little tiny thing of my buttons being pushed, I would not have been cleaning all day and doing laundry just to satisfy my anger, not please him. The children would have been playing in that room that had a huge glass window in the front and a huge glass window in the back. They would have been taking their naps later, and on and on and on.
I happened not to want company from my mom that day because I was too busy cleaning and being angry. When I think that we also would have been spending time sitting in front of the windows where the children played in that playroom.
As the rumbling began to get louder and stranger as the storms were pressing on through the day, my sister called and said she was sick and was coming home from work and she would be walking to my home which was just down the street from where she worked. Midway Manufacturing was the name of the place. She said my mom could just pick her up at my house. My sister showed up and so did my mom. They stayed for a short while and while sitting chatting for a few minutes we were discussing the fact that storms were quieting down a bit strangely and maybe they might stop and yet we were seeing very dark clouds in the distance. My mom and sister just wanted to get home fast just in case they started up again.
When they left, I proceeded to take some laundry that I had just finished upstairs and also to let the children out from behind their gates because they had awakened. I was folding some sheets, when I noticed that the sky was an eery shade of green, and that the rumbling was getting so loud that it sounded like the jet planes that went over my house on a daily basis. Then without warning my front door crashed opened, I knew something was very bad because it was dead bolted! In those days, there were no warning, no signals, no sirens in the towns to warn you of bad things coming but that would also change because of the many tornadoes that struck so many un-suspecting towns that year! "1976"
I gathered up my children hoping I could make it down the stairway and into the closet under the stairs but I had heard crashing and glass breaking and because I was folding sheets, I had one in my hands and as I started to see that there was no way to get down the stairs, so I tied my babies to me and the railing of the stairs. If we were going, we were going together! My children were crying and scared and all I could do for them was keep their little heads and backs protected with my body. I kept telling them that mommy won't let anything happen to them and we will all be all right, it's just a nasty storm. "It's okay, my loves, it's okay" The crashing glass, the moaning sounds of the walls was horrific and my heart was beating a 1,000 beats a minute, or at least it felt like that. In what seemed like hours but in actuality was only minutes, the horrific sounds stopped, the crashing ceased and even the lightning and thunder stopped too.
I started to try and untie us from the railing but my hands were shaking so badly I could hardly stop them long enough to get hold of the sheet! My children were still sobbing and shaking too and I can't even imagine the terror that was in their hearts at that moment, but little did I know, that it would show it's ugly head for two years to follow in their night terrors.
I finally was able to untie us and started down the stairs. I came to the bottom and was horrified at the site!
Trees in my living room, through the roof and into the wall. A lamp that was in front of the window had embedded itself across the room into the opposite wall. The room where my children would have been playing, had all their little animals sitting on chairs riddled with glass from the windows all being broken. The wall on that room had also blown out partially and bowed at least 4 feet away from the foundation and the upstairs floor where the children and I had been folding the laundry, was halfway down into that playroom!
My children didn't have shoes on and neither did I, but as I looked at their tiny little shoes that were lined up on a shelf at the bottom of the stairs, all I could see was that they were filled with glass and I couldn't put them on them. I made them sit for one moment on the steps and promised I'd be right back because I had to find shoes so that I could carry them out of the house. They actually listened to me because I think they were too frightened not to. As I was trying to get through to my utility room to find another pair of shoes that might not have glass in them because they were in a closet, I noticed the havoc the storm had caused. I noticed our car that was crushed by the garage collapsing and thought to myself, how am I going to get my babies from this house in case it's ready to collapse? Just as I was thinking this, I heard voices from someone yelling "are you okay, are you okay in there?" I quickly answered and told them I needed help to get all my babies out of this house. It was March 12, and it was pretty chilly out too and I was still searching to find something to wrap my babies in that didn't have glass in it. There were live wires dancing in the street and the neighbors that were there to help were two young girls that had watched the tornadoes touch down from their home on the corner. We couldn't open the screen door to get the children out, because Christmas lights that were still on the house from Christmas, and were now intertwined into the frame of the door and the door itself and it wouldn't budge. I started handing my children one by one out the opening of the door that was left from all the broken glass. Perfect strangers I thought to myself, I'm handing perfect strangers my angels, but I had no other choice because I couldn't get out any other way. We walked very carefully through the debris and fallen trees and metal everywhere to get to the corner and safely into their home so I could try and get a call out to someone in my family to come and rescue us, to no avail because the phones weren't working but because it hadn't been but a half hour or so since my mom had left my house and the news on her TV at home was saying that Midway Manufacturing was devastated and a wall had collapsed on several people, my mom knew instinctively that something terrible had happened in my neighborhood and thank God my sister had been sick that afternoon and came home at lunchtime. I kept watching out the window in hopes that I would see someone I knew and then my moms car appeared and the girls that had helped my children and myself out of the house ran out and tried to stop them to tell them that we were safe and were in their home. My mom was crying frantically and my sister had already jumped out of the car to run down the street because it was impassible, screaming frantically our names with the thoughts in her head of seeing that something had indeed destroyed our home she just couldn't believe her eyes.
It's sad when you think back now, because my sister too would have been killed possibly because she worked right where the wall came down at Midway Manufacturing and killed at least two people that I remember. Chain of events!
To tell you the truth, the phenomena of the tornado and it's capabilities is really something because you can not believe the strange things that a tornado is capable of at all.
When I think of the strange things it did as I surveyed the damage better on the next day, I was amazed at it's power. The girls who helped me with my children said that it was a double twister that day and the company that saw how my house had shifted off it's foundation said it looks like we were hit in two corners of the house as if it was hit by two tornadoes and ironically the girls who helped me that day said that too.
Bricks and mortar, wood and shingles can all be replaced, but people can't! I am glad my chain of events for that day turned out the way it did because I could never replace my family and that was the most important thing in the world to me, and isn't it to all of us?!
By:
If not for the days events, my life could have turned out much different and to think even today how bad it could have been, I thank God for getting us through it.
I had triplets and was with child as I said, and my house wasn't always picture perfect and my husband had a bit of O.C.D, and therefore couldn't handle when the house was not in order. Needless to say, children have toys and in this house, they had one room that went from the front of the house to the back of the house and in my estimation, was pretty orderly considering triplets and all their toys.
But anytime I was angry for being called out on something, I cleaned.. I'm sure my husband knew this and pushed my buttons, but it was what I did anyway. So if not for that little tiny thing of my buttons being pushed, I would not have been cleaning all day and doing laundry just to satisfy my anger, not please him. The children would have been playing in that room that had a huge glass window in the front and a huge glass window in the back. They would have been taking their naps later, and on and on and on.
I happened not to want company from my mom that day because I was too busy cleaning and being angry. When I think that we also would have been spending time sitting in front of the windows where the children played in that playroom.
As the rumbling began to get louder and stranger as the storms were pressing on through the day, my sister called and said she was sick and was coming home from work and she would be walking to my home which was just down the street from where she worked. Midway Manufacturing was the name of the place. She said my mom could just pick her up at my house. My sister showed up and so did my mom. They stayed for a short while and while sitting chatting for a few minutes we were discussing the fact that storms were quieting down a bit strangely and maybe they might stop and yet we were seeing very dark clouds in the distance. My mom and sister just wanted to get home fast just in case they started up again.
When they left, I proceeded to take some laundry that I had just finished upstairs and also to let the children out from behind their gates because they had awakened. I was folding some sheets, when I noticed that the sky was an eery shade of green, and that the rumbling was getting so loud that it sounded like the jet planes that went over my house on a daily basis. Then without warning my front door crashed opened, I knew something was very bad because it was dead bolted! In those days, there were no warning, no signals, no sirens in the towns to warn you of bad things coming but that would also change because of the many tornadoes that struck so many un-suspecting towns that year! "1976"
I gathered up my children hoping I could make it down the stairway and into the closet under the stairs but I had heard crashing and glass breaking and because I was folding sheets, I had one in my hands and as I started to see that there was no way to get down the stairs, so I tied my babies to me and the railing of the stairs. If we were going, we were going together! My children were crying and scared and all I could do for them was keep their little heads and backs protected with my body. I kept telling them that mommy won't let anything happen to them and we will all be all right, it's just a nasty storm. "It's okay, my loves, it's okay" The crashing glass, the moaning sounds of the walls was horrific and my heart was beating a 1,000 beats a minute, or at least it felt like that. In what seemed like hours but in actuality was only minutes, the horrific sounds stopped, the crashing ceased and even the lightning and thunder stopped too.
I started to try and untie us from the railing but my hands were shaking so badly I could hardly stop them long enough to get hold of the sheet! My children were still sobbing and shaking too and I can't even imagine the terror that was in their hearts at that moment, but little did I know, that it would show it's ugly head for two years to follow in their night terrors.
I finally was able to untie us and started down the stairs. I came to the bottom and was horrified at the site!
Trees in my living room, through the roof and into the wall. A lamp that was in front of the window had embedded itself across the room into the opposite wall. The room where my children would have been playing, had all their little animals sitting on chairs riddled with glass from the windows all being broken. The wall on that room had also blown out partially and bowed at least 4 feet away from the foundation and the upstairs floor where the children and I had been folding the laundry, was halfway down into that playroom!
My children didn't have shoes on and neither did I, but as I looked at their tiny little shoes that were lined up on a shelf at the bottom of the stairs, all I could see was that they were filled with glass and I couldn't put them on them. I made them sit for one moment on the steps and promised I'd be right back because I had to find shoes so that I could carry them out of the house. They actually listened to me because I think they were too frightened not to. As I was trying to get through to my utility room to find another pair of shoes that might not have glass in them because they were in a closet, I noticed the havoc the storm had caused. I noticed our car that was crushed by the garage collapsing and thought to myself, how am I going to get my babies from this house in case it's ready to collapse? Just as I was thinking this, I heard voices from someone yelling "are you okay, are you okay in there?" I quickly answered and told them I needed help to get all my babies out of this house. It was March 12, and it was pretty chilly out too and I was still searching to find something to wrap my babies in that didn't have glass in it. There were live wires dancing in the street and the neighbors that were there to help were two young girls that had watched the tornadoes touch down from their home on the corner. We couldn't open the screen door to get the children out, because Christmas lights that were still on the house from Christmas, and were now intertwined into the frame of the door and the door itself and it wouldn't budge. I started handing my children one by one out the opening of the door that was left from all the broken glass. Perfect strangers I thought to myself, I'm handing perfect strangers my angels, but I had no other choice because I couldn't get out any other way. We walked very carefully through the debris and fallen trees and metal everywhere to get to the corner and safely into their home so I could try and get a call out to someone in my family to come and rescue us, to no avail because the phones weren't working but because it hadn't been but a half hour or so since my mom had left my house and the news on her TV at home was saying that Midway Manufacturing was devastated and a wall had collapsed on several people, my mom knew instinctively that something terrible had happened in my neighborhood and thank God my sister had been sick that afternoon and came home at lunchtime. I kept watching out the window in hopes that I would see someone I knew and then my moms car appeared and the girls that had helped my children and myself out of the house ran out and tried to stop them to tell them that we were safe and were in their home. My mom was crying frantically and my sister had already jumped out of the car to run down the street because it was impassible, screaming frantically our names with the thoughts in her head of seeing that something had indeed destroyed our home she just couldn't believe her eyes.
It's sad when you think back now, because my sister too would have been killed possibly because she worked right where the wall came down at Midway Manufacturing and killed at least two people that I remember. Chain of events!
To tell you the truth, the phenomena of the tornado and it's capabilities is really something because you can not believe the strange things that a tornado is capable of at all.
When I think of the strange things it did as I surveyed the damage better on the next day, I was amazed at it's power. The girls who helped me with my children said that it was a double twister that day and the company that saw how my house had shifted off it's foundation said it looks like we were hit in two corners of the house as if it was hit by two tornadoes and ironically the girls who helped me that day said that too.
Bricks and mortar, wood and shingles can all be replaced, but people can't! I am glad my chain of events for that day turned out the way it did because I could never replace my family and that was the most important thing in the world to me, and isn't it to all of us?!
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