Not that anyone here would notice the difference between my absence and my just not writing, but I just got electricity back after five long days.
In case you've missed it (and you probably have, national news hasn't been covering it as far as we know), there are seven counties in southern Illinois that are considered disaster areas. Whether they're federal or just state disasters I haven't heard yet, but, well, there's been an awful lot of damage.
Friday afternoon a tornado watch rolled in to town accompanied with thunderstorm warnings, high winds, all that good stuff. The Boy was supposed to be leaving that day to go to upstate New York to work for an opera company for two weeks. He was running around getting last minute stuff done, but decided a quick nap was in order.
About twenty minutes into the nap, I can hear the rain and the wind outside and suddenly the alarm siren sounds. We live in what I hesitate to call a trailer. I mean, it probably is, but the guy we rent it from calls it a modular home. If you put it on a proper foundation it'd just be a big long house, and, as it is, our houses are anchored into cement piles underground (I understand most trailers aren't). Anyway, we do live in a trailer park, and there are some old, scary trailers.
So I'm considering the meaning of the phrase, "tornado in a trailer park" and trying to decide what to do. From my point of view, we have no basement, if we're going to die, we're going to die. I get out of bed and go look out the window.
I've been in tornadoes. Topmost in my mind is the time that I was working at a summer camp and saw two form outside the dining hall in the large flag field. The sky was a beautiful color of green and red, with swirly angry clouds and the softly falling rain was golden in the setting sun. Frankly, if it wasn't so scary, it would've been gorgeous.
Looking out the window on Friday was nothing like that. My mind instantly went back to the footage I remembered seeing of Hurricane Andrew. 1992 was a big year for weather- the California Earthquake was the same year, though it was eclipsed by the LA quake in 94.
Andrew, though, was the first thing I thought of. Rain torrenting down so you couldn't see out the windows, but giving you a vague impression that the trees don't usually bend like that. I sat down to take a look at the radar and my mother called.
"So, how you doing? Is The Boy gone yet?"
"No."
"Oh, what's he got left to do still?"
"Well, he can't go anyplace because we're under a tornado warning right now. OH."
"I'll call you back later."
The "OH," though I didn't tell my father this until two days later, was a tree sailing by our kitchen window. The power went out shortly after I talked to my mother, and I never did get a chance to see the radar. The Boy woke up shortly after and we went into the bathroom and felt the walls rattle in the wind and listened to the skirting dance around underneath the house for about twenty minutes.
We came out afterwards to see the damage. All around our house something like six large trees had fallen over. One fell on the house behind us. On the hill we can see from our kitchen door, we could see that one of the old trailers had flipped onto its side. The power was out, and we decided to see if we could get to Wal-Mart to pick up The Boy's perscription or find a place to get gas.
Foolhardy. The main streets in town were backed up for probably two miles, the rest of the streets were littered with trees and power lines. We started listening to the radio; the road out of town was blocked, parents were asked to try to pick their kids up from school, no one was hurt, and people were phoning in to describe damage.
Once the road north (the highway TB had to take to go to New York) cleared, he took off, four hours behind schedule, but he had three days to get there. I was left with a barrage of flashlights and the radio still playing.
One of the local radio groups (aka the only one not owned by Clear Channel) switched over solely to taking phone calls and reading out information. The town west of us didn't have electricity, the towns twenty miles north of us didn't have power, the town half an hour east of us didn't have power, towns an hour east of us didn't have electricity, the towns twenty minutes south of us didn't have electricity. It was about an eleven county area that was effected by the storm, and probably a fifty mile radius from the radio station was without electricity. I listened to them for probably four or five hours every single day because there was literally nothing else on the radio (radio coverage in my area being as bad as TV coverage).
My city, and several others, gave a water boil order. A few towns were without water entirely. This is because the water pumps are electrical- some towns, like mine, had an alternative source that they couldn't clean as well, but those who didn't simply didn't have water.
Initial reports from the various power companies said they hoped to have everyone up by Tuesday. Crews rolled their way into my town and started working hard probably Monday. That's when I really started seeing the most trucks. They realised that my town (specifically the area where I am and south of me) was probably the hardest hit and maybe by Thursday they would have everything sorted out.
Last night at seven fifteen the electricity came back on. Which was wonderful. But a storm had been expected to roll through the area that afternoon, so I left all the food in the cooler that night. At two thirty, I woke up to a spectacular lightning display that killed the power for several hours. I went to bed at four, and was awakened by my mother four hours later to tell me my power was back out. She could get on the electric company's website, where they were running an outage map by zip code- my entire zip code was supposedly out. I glanced at my clock; nope, I had power. No, I had no idea how long.
Driving around town today to get, well, OK, ice cream and a frozen pizza (I had to cook the chicken and hamburger in the fridge on the charcoal grill- I was in the mood for processed food.) things are pretty much back to normal. There are a lot of trees down, and there is a certain amount of property damage, but what's really miraculous, at least in my town, is that it wasn't worse than it was.
There was only one death. A man in the city to the west was going up his basement stairs to see if things were clear, and a tree branch came through the basement door and down the steps at him. It's too bad- so many of the houses in this area don't have basements. Where I come from, a house without a basement is extremely rare. Down here, a full finished basement is almost unheard of.
One of the local schools had part of the roof torn off. Since the ice storm this February, most of the area schools used up all their emergency days, but since the disaster declaration, they won't be staying any later in the year. A couple of schools are considering that they may have to move some classes. Some of the schools that get out earlier in the year have excused seniors from finals. The local community college cancelled finals except in those instances where students believe it would have significantly improved their grades.
No one can think of a way to classify the storm. There were two tornaodes sighted in a town north of me, and my town had a hook echo on the doppler (which means that tornados have the opportunity to form). But mostly there were straight line winds. The local airports clocked a 98 mph wind and a 106 mph wind before the meters were no longer on their roofs.
The local media is referring to it as an "inland hurricane," because of the eye-like formation that developed on the radar. That's probably the title that will stick, regardless of whatever it may have been officially. Really, it wasn't long enough to count as a true hurricane, and I don't think the wind was actually strong enough. I've heard a few other terms as well- mesocyclone and derecho (I'd say it's probably the latter, if wikipedia is any authority), but Google Illinois Inland Hurricane and that'll give you a lot of information. If you're interested.
Oh, and that radio station, that played nonstop coverage for six days? They're having a poll to name it.