So, a lot has happened since my last post. I have to laugh. I posted on Thursday, May 15. The next day was Friday, May 16, the day before we left on vacation.
I had a lot to do that day, but it was a day off. I had finished my spring semester of teaching, so I did laundry in the morning, and then my afternoon plan was to get a pedicure and then pack in the afternoon. I got home from my pedicure and Louie was working from home.
Storms had been predicted, but for spring in St Louis, this was nothing odd. We were under a tornado watch, but again, nothing odd. I had printed out some things for the trip (I like to have print outs because I’m old-school and like back up copies, plus internet can be unreliable in remote locations) and I had printed out my packing list and was working my way down it. I guess it was around 2:30/2:40, and my phone tornado alarm went off. Louie was working in his office and I was in the bedroom on the second floor so I quickly popped over and turned on the TV to see what the deal was, and the news said the tornado was on the ground at 64/170 heading east, which is…really near us. The outdoor sirens were going off, and I called out to Louie, I said, Louie, the tornado is heading towards us, and he said what, and I said, literally, it’s heading towards us, it’s coming up 64 or Forest Park Parkway or something, and he started running around unplugging stuff–we had a TV get destroyed once in a power surge. We quickly closed the storm windows that were up and started heading downstairs. It wasn’t even really storming or anything yet, it was just a normal day, until it wasn’t.
We hadn’t made it all the way down to the basement when the power went out. It was mid afternoon but it was all of a sudden pitch black outside. Louie started trying to look outside, it sounded like hail, but I just ran downstairs and yelled for him to follow. I don’t know if it was hail but it got really loud and lots of noise. He came down a minute later, and we stayed there for a few minutes. I brought up the news on my phone and they were talking about a tornado on the ground in the Central West End which is a neighborhood to the east of us, so we figured it had passed us at that point, but we just stayed there until the noise quieted down. It started looking a lot lighter too, and so we cautiously headed back upstairs.
Louie started looking in the backyard I think and I looked out the front, and oh my gosh, I didn’t know what to expect. I think I was looking at the cars first just to see if there was hail damage or something? and then I saw all the trees, and I felt all faint on my legs and I called out to Louie again to come look.
Right away I could tell that our Subaru was okay, and we could tell from inside that our house seemed pretty good overall and we hadn’t heard anything really bad, but across the street there were huge branches down and we weren’t sure if the Corolla, parked on the street had been hit. So we put on shoes and started venturing out slowly.
My car was fine and and we pulled some branches out of the road right away and some neighbors nearby started coming outside. People started walking out in a daze, just shocked…you could hear sirens all over, and it was just stunning. We didn’t know what had happened elsewhere yet (we were so very lucky compared to others, 5 people died, many lost their entire homes, I don’t think anyone in our neighborhood was injured) but we thought, we better walk over to Louie’s parents’ house to check on them, so we started doing that, which took us a little while and we kept getting sidetracked and having to step over major debris and trees. The trees were everywhere, across roads, fallen on homes, cars, pulling up sidewalks, causing water main breaks, etc.
We made it to Louie’s parents, and they were better off than us even, their street had less damage, though unfortunately they had no water due to the water main break (you can see in the above picture). We were lucky to still have water, as ours must have been coming from another direction.
People started pulling out chain saws and using jeeps to pull larger branches out of the roads and worked to get the streets cleared in the neighborhood at least enough to get through in some way, even though some major entrances and exits were closed. We didn’t really know the extent of the damage until much later. And of course the people in poorer neighborhoods north of the city who already had less resources ended up with more damage and less resources to deal with the damage, and as far as I know, over two weeks after the storm, nobody has received any help from FEMA.
Terrifying many people in the path of the storm didn’t even get notifications the storm was coming. There were issues in the city with tornado warnings not going out properly, and there are many issues with how clean up is going and how the aftermath is going, but I won’t make this blog post about that. I figure the blog is mostly about my life, so this post is mostly about my experience.
After a few hours Louie and I realized, hey, if we are still going on this trip tomorrow morning, we need to finish packing, and since we don’t have power and are unlikely to get it back before this evening or any time soon, we better get finished packing before dark. So, feeling a bit guilty to not help out more, we went back inside and packed. I had texted quite a few friends, and lots of people texted me, friends, students, colleagues, checking in, that day and over the next few days. In a way I felt very guilty leaving on a trip, but also, I’m not sure how much help I could have been staying around? I don’t know, there’s always guilt, isn’t there? We were lucky to still be able to go, and we were lucky that a tree didn’t hit our house.
We thought we escaped undamaged, but after we got back Louie took a good look at the roof with binoculars and realized maybe there were some issues so we are trying to get a roofing company out to look. Roofing companies are pretty busy with much bigger jobs so we know it might take awhile, but I think all the hail/flying tree debris might have caused a bit of damage afterall. We didn’t hear a freight train noise, but it sure was loud and there sure was a lot of wind. I think we were towards the edge of the tornado and I think it was picking up speed as it headed east past us. Honestly, we just got lucky. A few blocks south, a few blocks east, they all got hit a lot worse. I was really shaken up for a few days, maybe even longer, just a bit in shock really. It was unreal, walking out and around the neighborhood seeing all the devastation.
Anyway, I’m going to leave you there. Soon I will return and tell you about our amazing trip to Vancouver and Alaska, and probably also how we got to the airport the next morning, which was an adventure in itself. But until then, stay safe! And when the tornado sirens go off, go ahead and hit the basement.
