Yeah, we're still kicking. Tornadoes ripped through town last night, about 2 miles from our house. One went right by my office and took a lot of stuff with it. Gobs of damage around here. People trapped at the movie theatre behind my office for several hours (until this morning). I was able to get to the office but there's no power, and I had to drive over a down power line to even get there.
One of the buildings Carl's boss owns had pretty major damage, and I heard this morning that there are 400 light poles snapped in town. 19 of them are in a row, out by my office. I wonder if we'll have power there tomorrow. Our power went out last night at the first of three storms, around 8:20, and came on at 10:35 this morning. Crazy!
I was really worried about Prince Al and the salt tank (doesn't that sound like a rock band to you?), however, Carl definitely saved the day there. Several months ago he bought (at an auction, of course!) a little battery backup thing for a car, with an air pump, light, and I dunno what else. I got mad because I didn't want it sitting out in the living room where it was charging, so before Christmas he put it out in the garage and I think we both forgot about it. Last night he brought it in, and I plugged in the protein skimmer and the filter into that little battery. It held them both ALL night until the power came back on! I'm really amazed it lasted that long without dying (the battery is only supposed to be good for 15 or 20 minutes...obviously those 2 things don't use a lot of power). So everything in the tank survived, I think. And now we're buying a generator this week.
I haven't opened any of the freezer/fridge doors since the power went off, so who knows what kind of a mess we have there. Hopefully not much of one.
We were up until about 3:30 waiting for the tornado sirens to shut off, and the all clear. I think I slept for a half hour between 1 and 1:30, and then Carl woke me up to tell me we had to go back to the basement because there was another tornado. During the 8:00 storm, I have never seen such lightning! It was like a strobe light all throughout the sky, for at least a half hour! It was very still outside, and I could hear something like a train just to the north of us. We saw several big blue flashes, which I'm pretty sure were transformers blowing up as the tornado went through.
The Asian market that I like to shop at is no more. There were several buildings around it that look like they have substantial damage. Just to the west of Dynitech there are some storage buildings (like little pods or something) that are now all over the neighborhood. They're in pieces trapped in bushes, in the road, all over the field, everywhere.
Walmart had pretty bad damage from what I hear, and everything on the east side of Freedom Drive (in front of Walmart) has some kind of damage. There was also damage on the east side of town but I haven't driven out that way. I didn't drive by Walmart to see what a mess that was, traffic was backed up past the interstate and Meijers to even get there! Crazy!
I did hear reports last night that there was some looting in town. Mostly furniture and tires (????).
Oh, and for those of you who are asking, we didn't have any damage at home, just some little limbs fell that would have probably fallen during a minor rain storm. We are very fortunate. There are a LOT of people here who have big damage (I saw some houses where power poles landed in attics), please keep them in your thoughts and prayers.
Posted by tomiandc at March 13, 2006 11:21 AM