Longtime readers of Kittywampus may recall that there are just a few things that viscerally scare me:
- Wasps.
- The meth dealer in Pine-Aire Village (and the Cerberus hounds surrounding him).
- Tornadoes.
- Not being able to protect my children.
Almost all of these things enter into the story from Thursday night, through I don’t believe any wasps were involved. But honestly? I wouldn’t know; I was holed up with my kids. As I was cleaning up the dinner mess, I heard the scream of an emergency siren. I knew that the university was planning to test its emergency system – on Friday. So I flew out to my front porch, straining to hear the announcement through its bullhorn-distortions. All I picked up was “take shelter,” along with the oppressive air on my porch, and that was good enough for this North Dakotan-bred gal. I yelled upstairs, “Tornado warning!” The Tiger yelled, “Tornado warning!”
He and his brother, the Bear, tore down the stairs. I followed them into the basement, laptop and phone in hand. (Why, oh why, didn’t a flashlight even occur to me?) Minutes later, I chanced the upstairs again just long enough to rescue a few treasured stuffed animals and the cord for my laptop. I was alone with the kids. Mmy husband was at a meeting in the country, out of cell range, which was a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because he holds the theory that tornadoes never strike Athens, and that warning aren’t worth heeding. A curse, because I couldn’t be sure he was in safety.
For a good half hour, the biggest challenge was keeping the Tiger’s whine of “I’m bored!” from driving the rest of us around the bend. I let them watch a couple of silly YouTube clips (this one cracked them up again). I was hoping we could go back up once the warning expired at 7:15. The Bear would be about to go to his music practice, and we could try to track down their dad.
But then we heard the emergency siren again. And again. Soon sirens were wailing every minute or two. I still couldn’t catch the message, but I was certain it wasn’t “all clear.” I’d have guessed, oh, “prepare to die.” The next day, a friend said he’d heard “Tornadoes are surrounding Athens!” which I’m sure was close to the truth.
Here’s what it really said:
Looking around our basement hideaway, I started toting up the hazards. The small window. The bookshelves. My French horn (hey, that would be deadly if it went airborne.) I gave each kid an oversized pillow to shield their noggins and necks. At that, the Tiger’s boredom tipped over into terror. He would not be consoled by how silly it was to have a lumpy Winnie-the-Pooh chair over his head. I nixed YouTube so I could hear, and the LOLcats just weren’t cutting it as a distraction. Even the Bear was fighting tears. Heck, I was working hard to act brave. It didn’t help that the National Weather Service was starting to report multiple sightings of a twister touching down. Or that I was frantically hitting refresh on their page.
When we finally emerged from our secure underground location after an hour and a half (without ever sighting Cheney, I might add), we were all rattled. So were our neighbors and friends. We’d kept our power while most of the town and county had lost it. An acquaintance had actually seen the funnel cloud moving merrily down his road. Afterward, he had to take his chain saw to the large trees that had fallen across the road, trapping him and his family.
News filtered in only slowly. It seemed clear that Athens and its environs had been struck by at least one tornado. Rumors started to spread that the high school had been hit. One of the first reports noted that Pine-Aire Village had suffered damage and had to be evacuated due to a gas leak. The tornado had duked it out with the achingly poor mobile home park where I went canvassing in 2008. As usual, the tornado won. As usual, Pine-Aire Village lost. People who are trying their damnedest just to eke by now have new worries.
I haven’t taken a look at Pine-Aire because frankly, I’m still scared of the meth dealer and the vicious, unleashed dogs. But I did see how similar trailers were flipped and squished nearby in The Plains, the closest thing Athens has to a bedroom community. These mobile homes were located right next to Athens High School, which for bizarre reasons relating to government pork funds is located in the Plains.
This picture (and the next) was taken by my husband the next evening, as dusk was closing in. The woman next to the trailer is a Fox News local reporter. (They just lapped this up.)
Note how someone has scribbled “NOT SAFE” in big red letters. I’m not gonna argue.
The rumors about the high school turned out to be true. It was full with soccer and volleyball players and their families. The morning after the storm, a good friend of mine – the mother of the Bear’s best friend – responded to my worried email. She’d been working in the concession stand when some prescient soul yelled that a funnel cloud was approaching. She sprinted up the long steep hill to the high school and took shelter in the bunker-like locker rooms. Other adults, perhaps thinking they’d be safer sheltering in place (the hill is pretty daunting), remained in the concession stand. At least two of them were injured, though not seriously. One was taken to the hospital, the other treated on the scene.
That’s the inside of the concession stand.
That’s its exterior.
Meanwhile, the students on the field had sought shelter from the rain in the press box. Someone ushered them down to a locker room that’s located right on the edge of the field. Good thing. The press box blew clean off the top of the bleachers.
Cars were crushed as the press box collapsed behind the stands.
My friend had a bad half hour before she was reunited with her son. The fear of another strike hadn’t quite abated enough for everyone to be released. My friend was in cell contact with her son, but the wait was hard, especially as the smell of gas indicated leaks. When they were finally permitted to leave, they found a moonscape: mature trees snapped like sticks, debris everywhere, and a stadium that won’t host games anytime soon.
The scoreboard is whacked.
The football goals stand at jaunty new angles.
The wreckage in the foreground used to be a stadium light. (Those to the right and left remain standing, but their lamps have been turned 90 degrees.) The wreckage in the back – well, that was the visitors’ bleachers.
Structures to the right and left of the locker room were decimated. And yet, the kids sheltering there stayed safe.
School is called off until further notice. The high school suffered damage to some classrooms.
It also lost its two 1000-pound AC units, which blew off the roof.
It is a miracle that no one was killed. I heard one chopper take off Thursday night, and the next day a colleague confirmed that one person was injured badly enough to require transfer to Columbus. On the whole, though, injuries appear to be few and minor. Property damage is much more significant.
The tornado also touched down in Athens proper, leaving its main mark on Autotech, an automotive servicing and towing company at the edge of town. The only two buildings farther out along that road are the Super 8 Motel and the clinic where I had my colonoscopy. Those facilities survived with only minor damage (mostly missing shingles). Just a few yards away, Autotech was damaged beyond redemption.
The view from the highway.
Note the Coke machine encircled by corrugated metal. (I took this photo yesterday morning, and the machine was liberated by evening.) Note, too the wads of insulation. We saw them everywhere. All those years growing up in North Dakota, and I never imagined that the hallmark of a tornado could be oodles of rogue insulation.
Of course the impaired Coke dispenser adds credibility to the conspiracy theory …
… that this tornado was brought to us by Pepsi. (Photo from the high school.) Yes, I’m being flip. Black humor is one of the ways I deal with the world’s horrors.
I’m grateful that my family didn’t suffer any harm beyond the shock and fright. Today the Tiger has been playing with Lincoln Logs. Every once in a while a tornado comes and knocks them down. It’s spookily reminiscent of boys I knew who were 10 after the Twin Towers collapsed. They built mega-towers out of legos, which were level by terrorist flying planes. I shudder. Yet our kids seem to need these reenactments in order to come to grips with destruction that none of us can really fathom.
I’m grateful that all of the neighborhoods in Athens proper were spared, and that the elementary schools (except the Plains?) seem to be fine. (I still expect them to stay closed on Monday, given the track record of my boyfriend, the superintendent. We’ve now burned through a full third of our three calamity days.)
Ohio University got very lucky. It appears undamaged. Nor will the Darwin Award go to any of those students who went outdoors to watch the storm “cause I’ve never seen a tornado!”
Tonight, my thoughts are with the people of The Plains, the families of AHS students, and (further afield) the people who did succumb to the storm: a man in West Virginia as well as those killed in Queens in a separate, even freakier storm.
And I’m grateful for the rescuers, pictured here in an extraordinary photo by Spencer Heaps, taken the same evening as the storm:
Spencer Heaps has several other stunning photos at his blog. Please do pay him a visit.
The Athens News also has info on Athens County being declared a disaster area and on the confusing scene at the high school. They offer a photo gallery, too.
There’s no really good footage of the tornado itself, thankfully. (I don’t want people putting themselves in harm’s way!) The next closest thing is this clip, taken by college students living on a hill on the south side of town, which to my knowledge was not damaged.
Photos by me and my husband except as noted.
Patron cat of Kittywampus (1985-2001)
Wow. I’m relieved you’re okay.
I’ve had tornadoes touch down and had to hide in bathrooms and under desks, but I don’t recall one doing meaningful damage anywhere I’ve lived. I can only imagine the fear of seeing local landmarks messed up and thinking “that could have been me.”
And seeing a school ravaged like that just hurts, on a visceral level. Of all the things the tornado had to target, it had to be the school. Sure, I’d prefer a country with fewer football fields and more modern art, all told — but not like this.
Yeah, it’s rough that it hit the school – and the very poor people who are getting by in trailer homes. Statististics show that poor whites are more likely to own their home than are poor people of color. What the stats don’t show is that those homes are also liable to flip upside down in a severe storm!
The school was able to open the Monday after the storm, just three days later, thanks to all the kids (and I’m sure adults too) who volunteered to clean up. I’m sure they spent a miserable week without any AC; temperatures were in the low 90s until today.
One thing about the video…you can hear a girl in the background say “I’m calling my mom to tell her I love her”. Sweet, everyone should call their mom and tell her that.
I was thinking about calling my mom, but more to ask her, “Mom, am I doin this rite?” She is an expert in dealing with tornado warnings. She used to take us into the basement of the church three doors down, where we were both entertained and safer than we’d be in our own basement.
Cool that you picked up on that detail. I didn’t hear it.
So glad you’re OK!
Thanks, Holly! We’re fine, just a little rattled. Can’t say that for everyone. Our neighbor (who had no damage) just hired a couple of housepainters whose trailer home was wrecked. They are utterly broke and desperate for cash. Might not be the best painters in the county, but they sure did need the work.
Riveting post, Sungold! I’m glad you and your family are OK. (On the bright side, you do have a terrific knack for turning dangerous, painful, and unpleasant life experiences into great reading!)
As for your boys, don’t worry, maybe they’ll grow up to be like this guy.
(Hopefully not!)
Thanks, ballgame. I just now had a chance to watch the video. Didn’t want to with the kids around, and it seems my instincts were right! Dude! What just kills me is how the dude just keeps going back to the window, over and over, until you’re sure the scene will end with him getting sucked into the storm.
My kids are kinda scaredy cats about such things (much like their mama) so I think they’ll never try to become the Beavis and Butthead of the storm-chasing set.
Hi Sungold, great photos! I am so glad you are ok. Do you think next time your husband will take tornado warnings seriously?
Oh, yes! He got good and worried this time. Wednesday evening a few funnels were spotted up around Columbus, and he was all over the radar station.
The irony is that I should have been worried about *him* during the storm. I thought he was far enough south, but in fact he was pretty close to where these funnels originated. I guess it’s just as well that my geography was warped, because he was out of cell range regardless.
Yes it’s good you didn’t know because there would have been nothing you could have done. Ignorance is bliss in this case!
When I was five years old, my family was in a hurricane. We had just moved to Houston and were still in a hotel, not even in our house. I remember the sliding glass patio doors in the hotel room bowing back and forth like cloth in the wind, and my parents yelling at my brother and I to get away from the window (where we had been watching, fascinated, as giant highway signs blew down the road like tumbleweed).
I have reconsidered many events from my childhood from my parents’ perspective since becoming a parent myself, but until this post, I had never thought about what that must have been like for them.
Glad everyone is okay.
I do not appreciate the way you have labeled our neighborhood homes as “Meth dealer” and “Unleashed dogs” and in “The closest thing that Athens has as a Bedroom Community”, including the ones on The Plains you are referring to.
There are others who live here that aren’t that way and work for a living. There are elderly folks who live here as well.
Besides, you may have one in your family or one could be your next door neighbor. You could know a person for 25 years + and still not know “that real person”.
Please be a little more considerate when writing your thoughts and opinions unless you know the true facts.
Thank you.
Lisa
Lisa, there’s nothing derogatory about being a “bedroom community.” It simply means that many of the people commute to the larger town for their work, which is true for the Plains. Historically, it was different, but coal mining shut down long ago, and now the jobs are largely in Athens.
As for my characterization of Pine Aire Village: I wrote about it in an earlier post back in the fall of 2008, after spending an afternoon there knocking on doors and talking to people about the upcoming election. I wrote about it here. (I also included that link at the very beginning of the post.) The first person I spoke with, who had a high-school-aged daughter, said it was a terrible place to be trying to raise a child, due to all the drugs. The next person I tried to speak with responded by menacing me. He had the distinctive black teeth that come with meth abuse. I later spoke with an elderly woman who obviously made a huge effort to keep her trailer neat and tidy; she was an island of propriety in a sea of junk, despair, and yes, vicious dogs.
I don’t know if you have ever visited Pine Aire Village. Its poverty is heartbreaking in its own right; every person who lives there is a human being who deserves a better life. But it is especially heartrending to see those people who are trying hard to live a decent life against the odds. To gloss over the awful poverty of this place would do a disservice to those people.
I certainly did not characterize all of The Plains this way, and I’m sorry that you took my post as doing so. The rest of The Plains is a mix – middle-class homes, a few rather luxurious properties, retirement communities, and some pretty low-quality housing. We do have a poverty problem in this county, and The Plains is harder hit than Athens proper. A lot of people are out of work and want to be earning a living. A lot of people are working hard and still don’t make enough to raise themselves out of poverty. We need to be able to talk about poverty, and the social ills that accompany it, if we hope to ever alleviate them.
The tornado’s damage was exacerbated by poverty. Many people will not have adequate insurance (or any insurance) to cover their damages. The structures most vulnerable to severe damage are mobile homes, and it’s not the rich who live in them. People have rallied to help their neighbors recover, but the fact remains that the storm hit a lot of people who were already struggling.