About a week and a half ago on the 10th Dec, the tornado sirens went off just as Jon, E and I clambered out of the shower/bathroom. We had been lounging around after dinner, somewhat aware that there was bad weather coming (I had even told Jon to try and get home early), but didn't spring into action until we suddenly heard the sound of thunder in the distance and rushed to bathe. I had E with me in the shower as usual, and Jon did some half-shower thing in the bathtub.
Just as we were getting changed, the sirens went off. It was a good coincidence I had heard the emergency sirens earlier in the week on Monday, when they were doing their monthly testing, so the sound and associated was fresh in my mind. Needless to say however, when the sirens went off, mild panic and cursing ensued. E's footie pyjamas somehow became some Escher-esque creation, and I was yelling for Jon to go find our phones and see what the emergency alert said. We ended up gathering a few things, heading to the lower level, and seeing what the local news said, prepped to run into the basement if necessary.
While E whined for us to play Blippi, we watched KMOV to track where the tornadoes were going. Around 8:50pm, another siren went off. By 9:20pm however, the coast seemed clear enough. The tornadoes were heading across the river into IL (where it would later take out an Amazon warehouse and kill the workers there ): ), and we were tired. We went to bed, and right around 10pm, a third siren went off. Jon started grumbling, and I grabbed E (who was still in her sleep sack), and brought her downstairs to the basement. Jon came down shortly after, and as I watched KMOV on my phone, he played chess on his phone while E made a 'bridge' out of some plastic toy tiles we had in the basement. By that time, news of the warehouse collapse had hit the news. In a really bleak coincidence just as I was watching the news, the Amazon app on my phone sent me alerts that a book I ordered for E a few days ago had just been dispatched from the Amazon warehouse, yikes.
Finally around 10:35pm, the coast seemed clear again and we all left the basement to go to sleep. My anxious heart wouldn't let me settle down to sleep until at least an hour later, and I still kept checking the news. It was an interesting night, and not something I'd like to experience again any time soon, even though we were lucky that nothing happened to us, our property, or our friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment