Tornado!!!

Today I volunteered in the area that was hit hardest by the tornado. The devastation and wreckage is unlike anything I have ever seen. Even seeing all of it on t.v. is nothing compared to what it's like sifting through it and cleaning out people's houses. We canvassed the neighborhoods asking home owners if they'd like any help. I spent most of the day with a guy whose entire roof was blown off (top picture). His 90 year old mother sat in the living room, not knowing it was a tornado, and the roof was ripped off right above her head. We cleared his, and some of the neighbor's roof out of the backyard along with fallen trees and fences. Then we moved his belongings to moving trucks. What's remaining of the house is scheduled for demo in two days. And that is just one house. There are nearly 100 houses that are complete losses and hundreds more that have severe damage and will need some kind of major repair. I wasn't prepared for the amount of insulation that covers nearly every surface, inside and outside. Everything is peppered with insulation. Everybody is getting all of the debris out to their front yards where crane-dump-trucks then come by and pick it up.

Our house is fine and I feel bad even telling people about our broken windows and minor damage when there are homes that were blown off their foundation. I was taking a video of the hail when the tornado came. In the video you can watch the escalation in the size of the hail, the kids' anxiety level, and the wind speed at the very end. I stopped filming once I realized that what I was seeing was not normal and I needed to get everybody to the basement. Through the video, our patio furniture stays on the patio but in the end I was getting the chairs at the end of the block. Another thing to look at in the video are the holes that appear in the storage box on the left hand side of the patio.