Tornadoes April 2011

House in Town

 

Only about 10 miles from home.

 

The entire neighborhood, as far as you can see.

 

Ouch!

 

Only one of hundreds.

 

Relatively minor comparatively.

 

Even the trees were decimated.

 

Metal strip tied like a pretzel on one of the only lines left standing.

 

There’s a car under there somewhere.

 

A depiction of how selective the storm was.  One house stands while it’s neighboring house is swept away.

 

It’s hard to imagine that anyone was spared.

 

A bit of irony.  This was laying on the side of street in front of a home that was decimated.

 

What can you say?

 

These people were home at the time.  They survived.

 

This newsstand had to have flown several miles to have ended up in the neighborhood.

 

We walked through the neighborhood and talked to several survivors.  Some were fortunate in that their house still stands, barely, while others lost everything.  We were careful to not touch anything belonging to other people and we never left the street, staying off the personal property of others.  We only took pictures.  The pictures don’t do justice to the devastation. 

Tornado Grande

We faired pretty well through the recent storms despite being only 1 mile north of a f2 tornado, 5 miles north of a 1/2 wide f5 and about 10 miles south of about half a dozen other tornados.  So many people lost everything they owned in a matter of seconds.  One couple got sucked out of their home and thrown into a tree.  When they turned around, their house was gone.  All they have left is the clothes they were wearing at the time.  The f5 took out entire neighborhoods and business districts and even blew up a gas station.  Melinda was 1/4 mile north of the f5 while at work and they had to take shelter in the walk-in cooler at Walgreen’s.  They were stuck in there for 30 minutes while an untold number of tornadoes passed just outside the store.  There are easily hundreds of millions of dollars of damage in our area alone.  That doesn’t count the dozens of people that were killed or injured.  My heart goes out to them.

Not to trivialize the loss that so many suffered, but the worst thing that happened to us was that we lost power for 42 hours.  In a matter of hours after the filters and air compressors stopped working, the tank turned toxic.  We were changing the water as often as we could manage, but we were unprepared for the temperature drop of the water.  My fish live comfortably at 79 degrees.  Well by the 36th hour our tanks were down to 67 degrees.  The cold temperature and toxic conditions was too much for one of our giant fish that we had had for 4 years.  Our pride and joy, a female electric catfish parked herself in the warmest water she could find at the top of the tank and kept her head poked out of the tank for the entire 42 hours trying to breathe.  We were so afraid we were going to lose her.  Then we have a $80 fish that we were concerned about, but he never really showed any signs of real stress. 

As for our house, we received very little in way of wind and damage.  In fact, even with a tornado only a mile away, our trees were barely moving.  The rain we got was actually a benefit to us since we had just over seeded our lawn and had no other way to water it.

Our biggest inconvenience is that we had to drive 35 miles to get to a grocery store that had perishables like milk, meat, and orange juice, and we were stuck at home for a couple days because we didn’t have enough gas to get to a gas station that had power at the pumps.  When they finally did get power, there was a 2 hour wait just for a turn at the pump.  By the end of that day those gas stations were dry. 

We fared pretty well as our refrigerator and water heater are relatively new and have excellent insulation.  We didn’t lose any of our perishable foods and after 36 hours of no electricity our water heater still had hot water in it.  We used what we could get out of it to warm up the water in our fish tanks.  For food, since we keep so much of it frozen, all we had to do was walk onto to the back porch and grill.  So we ate pretty well.  We also always have about 10 gallons of drinking water on hand so that wasn’t an issue as a lot of the communities right now have contaminated water in the taps.  We limited our time in the fridge to only a couple of seconds at a time.  If it was in the fridge or freezer and we didn’t absolutely have to have it, we left it where it was so as not to let out the cold air.  There was no way for us to get ice since everyone around us was out of electricity and bought up all the ice in the first couple of hours.  Once it was gone there was no way for the stores to get any more.  It’s all being routed to the areas hit the hardest, and rightly so.  It’s a good thing that we have such an efficient fridge because I have $24,000 worth of medication in the bottom of it.  That would have been a mess.  This sealed the deal on us forking out the dollars to get a generator.  Life would have been a cakewalk if we had had a generator.  We could have alternated between powering the fish tanks and powering the fridge and freezers.  Don’t forget a couple of hours every night for recreation, but our necessities would have surely been met and we’d be one fish richer today.  

We were actually sandwiched between two concentrations of tornadoes, so we are really blessed.  I barely noticed the wind outside while all this was going on.  My power went out fairly early on so I didn’t even see the news to hear what was going on around me.  They cry wolf so often here that I don’t know I would have paid any attention to the news even if I had seen it.  Any time the rain falls or the wind blows, everything shuts down and the local tv stations go to full-time weather broadcasts.  I’ve heard our tornado warning sirens go off so many times when the wind isn’t even blowing.  Like I said, crying wolf.  Even so, the f5, with winds over 200 mph, was traveling across the ground at 55 mph so even for the people watching the news there was no warning before they were hit. 

Check back in the next week or 2 and I’ll see if I can get some pictures of some of the damaged areas.  Like I said, the devastation is astounding.  It’s a wonder we didn’t lose more people that we did. 

Well that’s all I got for now.  Like I said, check back in a week or 2 and I’ll try to get some pictures posted.  I really don’t see how any camera will be able to capture the scope of the disaster, but I’m willing to try.

To anyone reading this, if you were subject to the storm, I hope you made it out unscathed.  My heart goes out to you if you lost anyone or anything.  If you’re not in the area, take what you see on the news concerning the tornadoes and triple it.  Then you’ll have an idea of what went on here in just a few short hours.

Take care all.

jasen

14 Wonderful Years

That’s right!  14 wonderful years with the love of my life.  September 7th was our anniversary and we decided to celebrate the event with our puppy dog, Tigger, in Gatlinburg, TN.  It was my first time there and it was a lot of fun.  Of course having Tigger with us was a bit limiting as to which shops we could visit or what restaurants we could eat at. But we did have luck in find restaurants we could sit on the patio along with Tigger.  As for shops, we did actually find several shops that allowed to bring Tigger inside.  One them was a high end furniture store—an Amish store.  Incredible craftsmanship on super nice products and they didn’t hesitate to invite us in.

So the first day we were up there we decided to go hiking (waddling for me) and it was fun.  We drove into the North Carolina side of the Smoky Foothills.  We hiked 3.3 miles along a creek in complete shade into the town of Cherokee.  Once there we found ourselves a Dairy Queen with a patio and sat outside in the incredibly pleasant weather and had lunch.  As a bonus, we had lunchtime entertainment.  Two members of the Cherokee Nation were there performing native dances while of them played on the drum.  Of course they didn’t do any sacred dances out of respect for their ancestors.  However, they have many dances that were intended to be performed in front of other tribes.  It was a lot of fun.  After lunch we walked the 3.3 miles back to the homestead and the trail head.  Here is a picture of the placeThere’s just something about the homestead that piqued my interest.  I can see myself living on a homestead like this during that time period.   It was incredible to see!  I don’t know when it was built, but it was sometime ago.  It was actually a challenge to get this shot with no people or automobiles visible in it.  The entire homestead is fenced off, has 5 outbuildings, and a fenced off garden within the fence that outlined the property.  Just seeing this was worth our trip into North Carolina.

Our 2nd day there, as I mentioned earlier, was spent entirely in Gatlinburg walking up and down the strip.  We walked about 4 miles total that day and a good share of it was in the direct sunshine.  When we got back to the hotel, .8 miles from the strip, we stopped on the grass out in back of the hotel to let Tigger do his thing.  Of course he took one look at that creek, walked out into the water and promptly laid himself down in the water.  The water was deep enough that it was flowing up and over his rump.  He’s never done that before and we’ve had him since he was 10 weeks old.  This little 4.4 mile walk through Gatlinburg took us the better part of 5 hours.  Tigger was so good during the trip among all the people.  It was shocking how much attention he attracted from people of all ages.  There were 3 little kids, a boy and 2 girls, and they sat down on the ground to play with Tigger.  Tigger loved it.  They also had some brilliant suggestions on how to take care of Tigger.  lol.  They were so cute and so very sincere. 

Well the trip was a blast.  Gatlinburg is only 5 1/2 hours away from our current home so it wasn’t a miserable drive.  Oh yeah, you should have seen the crowds in Pigeon Forge.  It was horribly crowded.  We only had to traverse about 3 miles of the city, but it took us nearly 20 minutes to do it.  Though I hate, hate, hate crowds, this didn’t bother me.  Our whole reason for going on this trip was to go hiking and be out and away from all the people.  On the trail we hiked we only passed about 15 people total.  That’s my idea of a vacation.  I hope everyone could have such a relaxing vacation as what we had.

Included here is a picture of our little hairy son.  He is 10 yrs 8 months old.  Like i said earlier, we’ve had him since he was 10 weeks old.  Of course you can really see his age when you look at his muzzle.  He’s gone from a mostly pure black muzzle to a muzzle that is almost completely white.  It is saddening to actually see his age and know that he is not a little puppy anymore.  Here is a picture of my little boy at the trail head before our hike.

That’s about it for this post.  I know I’ve promised this in the past, but I will try to post more often.  This would be a great place to continue my journal which I used to be really good at keeping current.  Well, we’ll see how it works out.

Bye for now.

LG Ally

As a getting out of the hospital gift to ourselves, girl and I got new cell phones.  I really didn’t need one as I loved my old cell phone.  It was a Palm Centro, a smart  phone.  It did everything I thought I needed in a phone.  But when we were at the Verizon store they told me that I was eligible for an upgrade and that they had a buy one get on free special going on.  So to humor the salesman I checked out his little phone he was offering.  It was an LG Ally and boy was it was sharp.  I fell in love.  Before I knew it, we were both walking out of the phone with a new LG phone.

So far we have had it for just over 2 weeks and I love it.  If you’re a fan of Star Trek you’ll appreciate this analogy: For all intents and purposes, it’s a tricorder.  While I’m sure there’s some things it can’t do, I’ve yet to find them.  I have spent 3 hours going through the free apps and I still haven’t found the end of the list.  Of course a lot of them I’ll never even consider downloading, but I have found about a dozen that now take up space on my phone.  And with 32 gb of SD card to fill up, I have plenty of room to do anything I want.  My only complaint is that with all the apps that this thing can run in the background, the battery doesn’t last nearly as long as it did in my Palm.  On the Palm I had about 8 days of standby, 5 days if I talked on the phone for about 20 minutes a day.  With the LG the battery lasts about 2.5 days.  Of course there are things I can do/set to make the battery last longer, and I use them, but that limits some of the functions of the phone. 

Long story short, if you’re looking for a new phone, check out the LG Ally.  It really is a nice phone.  And the slide out keyboard is a perfect companion to the large touch screen.  I do have one thing I would change—I would make it, if possible, set so the ringer on the calendar events would sound until some sort of input was entered by the person to shut them off.  As it is the ringer sounds once and then leaves a notification on the screen.  Minor, I know, but annoying.  However, with that in mind, I still love the phone. 

HOSPITAL

OK, here’s the deal.  I had been feeling pretty crummy for the last couple of weeks.  I was getting more and more nauseous for seemingly no good reason.  I didn’t understand what was going on.  But everything came to head last Tuesday (10 days ago) when I started puking my guts up.  It was not cool.  After about an hour or two of that I decided it was time to go the ER.  By then it was 12:30 a.m. Wednesday morning.  So we packed our bags because I knew they were going to keep me.  I was right.  First thing they wanted to do (because of my history) was do a CT scan with contrast.  So they loaded me up onto the machine and did a pre-scan and then the fun began.  With the pre-scan complete they turned to do the actual exam.  The CT machine injects a contrast dye into the IV with a lot of pressure.  It turns out that it was too much pressure.  The injector blew my vein.  So they tried to start a new IV.  No luck.  In fact, 3 needles were bent just trying to pierce my skin to start the IV.  They were amazed.  It gave a whole new meaning to ‘man of steel”. 

Well  eventually, 7 sticks later, they were able to get an IV started and it seemed good until they injected the contrast when it blew.  They got permission to do the test without contrast and everything went well after that.  It was still another 6 hours before they put me in my room—my home for the next 7 days.

Now IV trouble didn’t stop just because I was given a room.  During my stay in the hospital no IV lasted more than 22 hours and no IV was started on the first try.  Finally after 3 days of poking and prodding they decided to put in a picc line.  It was smooth sailing from that point on.  They could administer drugs and draw blood without having to poke m any more.  But that only happened after I had been stuck 25 times.  Bummer.

Even with all this to consider, my hospital stay was very helpful.  The hospital staff, especially the nurses, were phenomenal in the care and consideration they provided.  They actually gave the genuine impression that they were concerned with my comfort and well being.  I could not have asked for a better staff to care for me.  Actually, some of them almost seemed disappointed that I had done some tasks without their assistance.  They wanted to be there for me. 

But all good things come to an end…as well as bad things.  Once they were able to administer drugs without worrying about blowing my veins, things went much better and I improved quickly.  And though they were sad to see me go, I was thrilled that I was able to eat solid food and was on my way out the door.  I want to do something, anything, even it’s just writing a letter of praise to their supervisor, to show my appreciation for how easy they made this hospital stay. 

So that’s what I’ve been up to lately.  I hope all of you got your August off to a better start than me. 

99.9% Complete

Yippee!  Our house is complete minus some minor straightening up of the kitchen.  That’s a tough one.  We have stuff on the counters that doesn’t have a home and the real estate agent says it’s best to have the bare minimum exposed to sight.  So with very little work left we’ll have the kitchen completed and I can call the agent and tell her we’re ready.  We worked on the outside today and it was disappointing to say the least.  The pressure washing of the vinyl went great, but cleaning the bottom of the house where mud has splattered onto the outer walls was where the results were less than stellar.  It’s like the mud dyed the walls a funky shade of reddish-brown.  But they are as clean as they’re going to be so we’re just going to have to suck it up and drive on (to put it in Army terms). 

This is it.  This is our house that is for sale.  Yes, we’re on a bit of a hill, but it’s not bad.  I enjoy it.  See the brownish stain on the bottom of the wall underneath the stairs/front porch?  That’s the part that didn’t come off.  It’s a good house.  If it were possible to take this house with us out west, I would.  Almost the entire bottom floor is garage and work space.  On a plus note, anyone who buys this house is going to have lots of wild blackberries.  They are super yummy!  So if you don’t want to purchase this property for the house, do it for the blackberries. Buy it, buy it, buy it, buy it………  Listen to that little voice in your head. 

Unbelievable

Peggy West, an elected official in Milwaukee county, Wisconsin said in an interview earlier this week about the Arizona law SB1070 that if we were talking about Texas and they had passed an immigration law similar to Arizona’s law, that she would have to look twice at it because Texas shares a border with Mexico.  But Arizona, she states, is a state a ways removed from the Mexico border.  I’m not making this up.  Thankfully a fellow councilmember who obviously paid attention in geography in school informed her that Arizona does in deed share a border with Mexico.  Even Jon Kyl of Arizona got wind of this and sent her a letter and a map to prove to her she was oh so wrong.  So in West’s own words, I guess she needs to think twice about this law in Arizona—SB1070. 

That’s a huge part of the problem with all the dems supporting boycotts of Arizona.  Most of them don’t have a damn clue what they are talking about.  Most of them haven’t read the bill for themselves.  I have read it and I can tell you that the Arizona law is more restrictive on law enforcement officials than the federal law on the same issue.  Not only that, but 35 years ago, the Supreme Court decided that it is within states rights to impose their own laws regarding immigration so long as the state law does not try to remove power for the federal law.  And in this case it doesn’t.  In fact, this law strengthens the federal law.  Why are we so afraid to enforce our own laws regarding immigration?  You keep hearing that our immigration system is broken.  How so?  The only thing that is broken is that we don’t do anything to enforce the laws once we find illegal immigrants on our soil.  I have a dozen friends or more from Mexico and Spain that are here legally which proves that our immigration system works.  Open your eyes people!  I’m not saying we shouldn’t let immigrants in.  We need them in our country.  That’s what makes our country great.  But it needs to be done in accordance with the laws that are already on the books. 

If you have a beef with Arizona’s law SB1070, please take the time to sit down and read it.  I promise you’ll be surprised that all this commotion was raised by such a mundane law.  It takes about 10-20 minutes to read, depending on how fast you read.  19 pages on most websites.  You can do and should do it if you are going to speak out against it. 

And what’s with Obama planning on suing the state?  What a fool.  It’s not the place of the federal government to tell states what laws they can or can’t pass.  Not only that, but once again the president finds himself at odds with the American people since all polls show that a whopping 70% of the people in this country approve of this new law in Arizona.