If you’ve ever wondered how a tornado sounds, I found a great example last week when I took my car through the car wash. You know the dryer at the end of the car wash? You know how it’s very loud and kind of shakes your car because of the force? Well, that pretty much describes it. Add in constant ear popping and large objects being thrown against your car and you’ve pretty much simulated a tornado. Oh, and don’t forget to crank up the heat in your car too because it’s super hot and humid…especially in a storm shelter.
Ok, now on to the damage.
Like I said yesterday, I was surprised to see walls still standing in our house. I told my sister while we were down in the cellar that this tornado was way worse than the May 3, 1999 tornado where we lost our first house. Turns out I was right (only this house fared better than the first one). Unfortunately. I think if the core of this tornado had taken a path a little further to the north, I would have stepped out to find our house and contents scattered across the property or completely gone.
Here is the damage done to our home.
The damage is as follows:
It ripped off the front porch of our house (it ran across almost the entire length of our house) and swept away all the content on the porch
It blew out all of our north windows and only busted out the girls’ bedroom window on the south. (all other south windows were still in tact)
It ripped off and swept away the entire second story (the man cave/storage area) that was above the garage. Some of the content was found in our backyard. I lost ALL of my Christmas and holiday decor and all of the girls’ baby clothes, shoes & toys. We also lost pretty much all of James’ paintings and artwork.
It ripped our shed apart (I think pieces of the shed are what we heard hitting the shelter during the storm), and it crumpled our above ground pool.
We have no idea where any of the porch is nor do we know what happened to the pool cover. We are also missing a metal windmill that was anchored into the ground in the front yard.
The inside of the house looks like someone threw in a bunch of glass, some boards, pieces of sheet metal (that we have no idea where they came from), water and mud and ran it threw a blender. There was mud all over the walls and carpet. There was glass and other debris all through the house (including debris stuck in and through through the walls). There was enormous amounts of water pouring into the garage from what used to be the man cave. There were things from rooms that had been blown into other rooms. We think debris was blown into the house through the north windows and what actually made it to the girl’s room was sucked out of their window. I suspect this because the things missing from the house that we actually did find were in the back yard. There were no contents of the house in the front yard.
We had a wonderful group of people from Samaritan’s Purse (I’ll be posting about this group at a later time) other member’s of our church, and family who came and helped us clean up inside and outside the house. I am so unbelievably thankful for them because I think we would still be doing clean up if it weren’t for them.
Because we’ve had several storms come through since the tornado, including another horrific storm that claimed more lives this past Friday, mold has started growing on and in the walls of the garage and at last check was quickly spreading throughout the house. The carpet I’m sure is starting to mold as well.
At this point, our insurance company is wanting to try to repair the house. What this means is that at minimum, they will gut it down to the frame and rebuild it. However, we are concerned about the structural integrity of the house so we are working with insurance to get this worked out. Ultimately, we won’t know until the house is gutted and right now, we don’t have any idea when that will be.
So what’s next?
We will hopefully, move into an apartment this week. We’ve already moved some things over but due to being extremely sick, things still have yet to be unpacked. Once we get settled there, we will begin the process of rebuilding. We expect this to take at least a year or more.
I’m sure I’ll say this in every post for a while but I just can’t thank you all enough for all the love, prayers, support and donations you have sent our way. You have no idea how much they have helped us…emotionally as well as spiritually.
Please also keep my family in your prayers as my sister’s house was also destroyed (still waiting to hear if it’s totaled but the roof is basically gone and a few walls are on the verge of falling over). Also, my grandparents who lived next door to me, my great aunt’s house that is two doors down from us, and another aunt’s house were completely totaled.
