In Memory of Tornado Victims

Today, several people lost their lives in southern Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio.  The devastation created by these powerful storms is unimaginable.

Below is a post I wrote in November 2010, remembering the five year anniversary of the day my niece and her husband won the tornado lottery.

Please say a prayer for all those affected by today's horrible storms. 



THE DAY MY NIECE WON THE LOTTERY

It's been exactly five years today.  

Does anyone ever have a GOOD call at 3:00 a.m.?

I was sound asleep. Dead asleep. Then our home phone rings.

You know that feeling, right?         We all know that feeling.

Bob arouses enough to grab the phone and I can still see him standing by the bed. I'm assuming/hoping/praying that he'll say, "wrong number". But he doesn't.

Instead, in the dark, in my nearsighted blindness, I can see his arm take the phone from his ear and it slowly, ever so slowly moves the phone towards me.

My mind is screaming NO NO NO. Don't ever hand me a phone in the middle of the night. That's always a bad sign. Unless you're expecting a new baby in the family, a phone call at 3:00 a.m. is just plain BAD.

I dreadingly take the phone and say, "Hello?"

I hear the voice of my nephew. And unlike most dreaded-middle-of-the-night-callers about to deliver bad news, Brian is smart enough to start off the conversation like this: "They are OK. "

Everyone take a lesson from my nephew.  If you have bad news to deliver that does not include the death of a family member, say those three wonderful words FIRST.  "EVERYONE IS OKAY" 

WHAT A RELIEF!

My memory is a little foggy after that, but someone how I either heard or knew that he was talking about his sister and her husband.  I'm thinking traffic accident, but thankfully they are both okay.

He proceeds to tell me that a tornado "destroyed" his sister's house, but that they are safe.

So I rationalize that he is telling me that their house had just a bit of damage from a tornado.  Destroyed is so often a misused word and especially an overly emotional one, and I'm all about connotation of words.   I figure either he is overly emotional or my niece, his sister was.

He lives about an hour away from her and daylight is a LONG time off.  He's not overly panicked, but I can tell he needs some comfort.  He had already called his parents and was pacing the floor.  I tell him he has to wait until the storms pass through and there is some daylight.   I run downstairs to check out the news.  Our favorite local weatherman is already on the air because the storms were heading our direction and nearly all over Indiana.  I kept waiting for news of the tornado that hit southern Indiana, but he is too busy reporting on our local bad weather.

So Brian calls me again an hour or so later.  He's still pacing back and forth and wondering what he should pack that they will need.  The only helpful hint I can give him is to pack some toilet paper. 

Obviously anyone would be upset, but here's the background story.

My niece lived in a '70s tri-level home.  She and her husband had luckily been out late that night.  They had just gotten home and realized that the weather and wind was a little scary.  They slipped into their jammies, went upstairs to their bedroom and turned on the local news station.  The doppler radar and the weatherman was precise enough to tell them the tornado was nearly upon them. 

This was a picture of the twister that was captured on a local hospital's video cam.

They grabbed their dog and headed to the lowest part of the tri-level, a "downstairs" bathroom where the floor was only about 4 feet below the ground.  The first thing she did was call her brother.  Apparently as kids they used to huddle together during severe weather without waking their parents.  He was her "storm buddy".  They remained on the cell phone together during the entire event.

While my niece, nephew-in-law and their dog huddled in that barely underground bathroom, the bathroom door was rattling so badly, her 6'7" husband had to brace himself with his back to the tub and his feet holding the door closed.  Her brother is listening the entire time, unbelievably the cell signal never dropped.

Brian held his phone to his ear while listening to destruction and his sister screaming in his ear.  I'm sure he was thinking the entire time he was listening to his sister's death.  Finally, finally the noise stopped and my niece stopped screaming.  She told him there was a huge crack in the refuged bathroom wall.  She wasn't kidding.  Part of the wall was about 2 inches inward from the original wall.

Her husband finally opened the bathroom door and instead of looking at a messed up house, he could look up and see SKY.  That's right, where there should have a ceiling of a lower floor, there was sky.

About 5:00 a.m, I get a call from my niece.  They are in their car sitting in their driveway.

Of course they can't drive anywhere because there is utter destruction around them.  They could not even turn their car on for an hour or so because of the gas leaks in the area.  Remember, this is November, it's COLD.  Tornado "season" is long past in Indiana, but not that year.

I remember a couple things about that call.  She first said, "What am I going to do?"  I told her, "You are going to wait until daylight and then you are going to go through what's left and pick up what you can find and you are going to start over.  Your only choice is how you deal with this.  You can choose to be strong and deal with it or you can let it destroy you."  At some point in the conversation she told me that because they had been ready for bed, they had no clothes other than pajamas.  Her voice was suddenly like a little girl when she said, "AND I don't even have a bra."  I told her that her mother could go buy her a bra at Walmart on the way down that morning. 

As soon as daylight hit, my nephew, sister and brother-in-law and a few cousins that lived close made their trip down to Evansville.  And as you can see, when my nephew told me the house was destroyed, it was not an overly emotional description. 

I believe the green wall was their bedroom they were in where they listened to the news reports of the impending monster heading their way.  Notice the mattress.  The outside walls appeared to have folded inward and took away everything in their way, including the carpet in the bedroom. 

Above is a picture that was taken by an AP photographer of my niece and nephew.  This pic ended up on websites and papers throughout the world.  The doorway my nephew is standing in had just been replaced and seemed to hold up more than alot of the house.

See that boat between the trees?  That was in the back of my niece's house.  That boat wasn't there before.  Not sure if the original owner ever found his boat.

Yes, their place was utterly destroyed, but the amazing thing is what they located when digging through the rubble.

A picture of my sister and niece.

A suddenly patriotic tree.

Inspired by a friend of mine.  Her son was saying his prayers one night, he added this saying.  Another friend of mine remembered the funny story and after the tornado said that Kyle's prayer applied to my niece. 

How right she was.

My niece standing where her garage used to be.  One of their neighbors lost the roof of their garage.  It was found UNDER another neighbor's car.  The power and randomness of tornadoes are unbelievable.

A picture of my niece and her brother, who lived through the nightmare with her by cell phone.  She is holding a wedding gift and he is holding one of TWO identical books found in the rubble.  If you can't read the title, it's a copy of the WIZARD OF OZ!

Tornados are odd, terrifying, horrible AND amazing.

So, as I told my niece that horrible morning, your only choice is how you deal with the horrible situation.  After the initial shock, our family thanked the Lord that my niece and her husband won the lottery that day.  Their's was the only house in their neighborhood that was destroyed.  Sadly, a nearby trailer park was the site where 25 people lost their lives.

Below is how my sister, her husband and a couple cousins celebrated their blessings that day.  Houses and all the material belongings can be replaced.  People cannot.

God had bigger plans for my niece and her husband.  Last year they became the lucky parents of two wonderful girls that needed a new home and family and I've written so much about.  If only we could have seen five years into the future and envisioned how much all of our lives have changed.