Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Where Are You, Toto?



Wow. That was close.

We were sitting here, having a quiet evening at home. Ron was upstairs in the computer room, and I was downstairs in the livingroom.

His phone rang first. As it was ringing, he didn't even pick up yet, and my phone goes off. What's the chances? Ron's sister Susan was calling him and my brother Michael was on my phone calling me.

Our respective siblings were calling us to let us know to hang on tight. A tornado was spotted on the highway over at I-90 and Route 57. For anyone familiar with this area, that's only a couple of miles away from us.

I knew the weather was awful, as we were sitting here listening to the thunder and watching the lightening. We were both oblivious to the danger of the tornado. Because of the heads up, we went into survival mode.

We packed a laundry basket of necessities and put it in our coal room. That's a room under our mud room that we figured was the safest room in the house. Big, cinder block walls, almost all underground, and no windows. In the basket were what we thought were necessities. A two gallon jug filled with water, a six pack of water, a bottle of wine (hey, you endure your emergency your way, I'll do it my way), a flashlight, crackers and blankets. We had all the doors open between here and there for easy entry in case of emergency and I had my sneakers on ready to run. We were glued to the TV to see where the tornados were headed. I don't think I've ever been that close to personal disaster before, and I hope to never be there again.

Thanks to Susan and Michael for watching out for their baby siblings! All is still standing here on our end of the state, thank goodness. Now I'll sleep with one eye open while listening to the storm that is still blowing out there. Welcome to spring.


Here is a picture of the sky over Lorain right before the tornado hit. Ugh.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whew! I'll never tease you again about arriving home on Friday Evenings about clicking your heels and saying the mantra, "There's No Place Like Home again."

Anonymous said...

Thankfully we are all from families that care for each other, and think of them in their times of emergency!