SPECULATION

Speculation
Tuesday, April 4, 2006

Twisters and tornados are not uncommon to this area. Most of the folks I talked to had experienced at least one; some had been in two, especially the gentleman in the second house.

The gentleman in the second house said he had a storm shelter in the backyard but the door needed fixing and he had been too lazy to fix it. He had also watched the funnel cloud from his yard. The funnel cloud, he said, was easy to distinguish because it was silhouetted against the western skyline just before dark. Off in a distance he said he could see the power line transformers exploding. After he went into the house he tried to open the back door to look out and couldn’t. He said he knew it was time to get out of there. He put his family in the pickup and drove south down the gravel road as fast as the truck would go.

The tornado took out his garage next to the house. The barn in the backyard was reduced to a big pile of rubble; a big tree crushed through the roof of on the backside f his house. His wife car looked like it has just been dug out of a mud hole. The tornado popped all the windows out of her car except the windshield. Jokingly he said that he needed to get around to fixing that shelter door.

Down the gravel road to the north about 800 yards is where the third house use to sit. His neighbors that lived there weren’t so lucky. Nothing was left of that house. It was literally picked up and smashed against a very large tree. The tree was the only thing that kept it from being totally scattered across the field. What remained was a pile of debris wrapped around that large tree. Some of the house was scattered across the filed in front. A TV was lying in the ditch as was a refrigerator, and a butane tank. A camping trailer that was parked in the yard was reduced to a frame with tires. It was thrown 80 yards east from where it set next to the house. The gentleman that lives in the house was at church Sunday when the tornado hit. His mother said that if he hadn’t been in church he would have been home sleeping. She speculated about what would have happened to if he had not been in church. From the looks of what remained of his house I also speculated in my mind about what would have happened to him.

A visiting relative said the tornado sounded like death and she would never ever forget the feeling of helplessness. She said the tornado came and went in a matter of seconds. That, after it left entire houses were just not there anymore. Both she and the gentleman’s mother were thankful that he went to church Sunday.

It was hard to identify anything that looked like furniture or appliances. The landscape littered with metal, siding, roofing, and insulation. Insulation covered the ground like snow in Wisconsin. Everything was covered with mud; the things that the wind didn’t blow away were beat down by baseball sized hail. It was a grim and depressing reminder how powerful and violent a tornado can be.


It seems like this tornado had a mind of its own, picking and choosing which houses to leave and which houses to destroy. While I know scientifically that this was not the case, I do know it’s difficult if not impossible to predict the nature of tornados. Weather forecasters can only predict what tornados can do by looking at what they have done in the past. But it wasn’t hard to predict what the people on the gravel were going to do. They were upbeat and in good spirits considering the loss they suffered. They all said they were happy to be alive and were going to rebuild their houses.

Now I know there is a lesson for me in this experience someplace and it’s probably looking me in the face, but I don’t see it yet. On second thought, maybe I do see the lesson. What I overheard from all the residents on the gravel road what that they were thankful to be alive; that houses can be rebuilt; material things can be replaced, but lives cannot.