Dealing With Disasters

I love September when the sky turns a crisp clear blue, the air turns cooler and getting ready for the turning of the leaves of fall. However this September was anything but ordinary with high temperatures and instead of turning of the leaves, we have had turning of the trees and houses too!

The warning sirens went off, as we watched the fast moving clouds and wondered where we would go for shelter. The school is suppose to be the meeting point, but the last time we had the sirens go off, no one was there to let anyone in , so we sat in our car taking on some heavy rain and winds. So much for a plan of an emergency! We were also told that it was highly unlikely that we would ever be hit by a tornado since we are in a valley and it would break up before then. We listened to the emergency broadcast tornadoes in Hocking County in SE Ohio. The wind came, the rain came, the power went out briefly, but luckily no damage to us. A few miles south in Athens county, the damages were soon unveiled as well as the wild stories that went with it. Our Internet was out since service came from Nelsonville 10 miles away. Another 10 miles and you would be in The Plains that suffered a bulk of the damages.

We saw the devastation on the local channels with head on views. You can see the devistation on the ground in this video. And then To see it with a birds eye view, really puts things in perspective. The lens of my camera got to do just that! A special thanks to our friend Fred Hawk who made the flight so these pictures would be possible. These were taken on Saturday. I had to edit some of the over exposed photos and do some cropping, but I think I have some pretty good ones that will show up well on the blog.

Some homes were picked up and tossed around like toys.

Others had damages to roof tops.

The blue seen are not actually swimming pools as it may seem, but tops of roofs without their shingles.

The school field sustained 3 million dollars in damages. It buckled and twisted the bleachers as if it were straw.

Luckily the high school (you can see on the hill) was spared any damages.

The Athens Messenger News had roof damage too.

The one that amazed me was the damage that it had done to a tire company in Athens. It was as if it were picking out the center randomly and leaving the ends in tact!

Next door is the Super 8 Hotel which has some shingles missing.

We heard that one guy was trying to drive to his home with his 12 year old. His wife and 6 year old were at home. He saw it coming and said he knew he couldn't make it to the house and drove as fast as he could away from the house. It wasn't until about 20 min. later he was able to make it back only to find that the roof was gone, but his wife and other child were fine.

Another interview with a woman was that when it hit, she was hanging on to the door handle of her mobile home and it tore part of her roof off. She was still shaking at the thought of nearly loosing her life.

Further SE. a guy was missing 60 head of cattle. They finally found all but 6. A mother of a friend of mine, had a cow that something had hit it and it left a huge gash in it's hip so they had to kill it. She also had a horse that had suffered damages with cut tendons and it was going to take months and months of healing and would have to be immobilized during that time. Given the age of the animal, they decided that they had to put it down. Another guy lost his life in his home. Another home was destroyed and they found a woman that had to be hospitalized. I believe they said there were 4 separate tornados that hit SE Ohio. It's so out of character for this time of year as well as area.

Along with natural disasters, we have been dealing with some on the home front. Our plumbing has been springing up leaks everywhere in a domino fashion. It seems our home has been over pressured. Still not sure if it has been the regulator's fault or the water company. We still show 155 lbs. of pressure when it is suppose to be 75! Our adjuster and the plumber meet tomorrow with me. We shall see what we need to do and what this will cost all of us since we have a high deductible. Here is our mini devastation.

I shall certainly be glad when all of these disasters are behind us and the clean up on it's way to rebuild our house and the community.