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Nay for Tornados


burntpastryies

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July 19th 2018 was a normal day for me. Went in to work knowing that there was a possibility of thunderstorms around the time when I was supposed to be getting off, no biggie I can handle that.

Around 4pm is when the first set of sirens went off, though it was sunny and bright out. Everyone's phones kept going off stating Tornado warning in effect until 4:15. Then it got extended until 4:45 . I was off at 4:30 but decided to wait until the warning was over. Then somewhere between 4:30 and 4:45 the sky got really dark on the one side of town, and the sirens went off a second time. No body really knew what all was going on but, as it turns out a Tornado had touched down and destroyed parts of our town. I wasn't sure if my  house had gotten effected but then I heard someone say that the roof of a building a ways down from my house had been torn off. So then I panicked and left trying to speed home to check if my house and cats were okay.

It didn't hit me until I got to a bridge that a tornado had gone through. The steeple of our courthouse.. you can see for miles. I first noticed it was gone. a few blocks after this bridge is where you could really see the damage. My mother made it to my house before me and called to tell me I had gotten hit pretty bad. 

After making a lot of turns, and turning around to find a different way home because of trees laying across the street.. I finally made it home.

The gist is... my shingles were torn off (but thankfully no holes in the roof), siding got torn off, my neighbors garage was in my yard, my husbands car was totaled, and a lot of busted windows. 

Dealing with insurance has not been fun. I don't feel like I have been given enough to cover all the damage, but thankfully my dad knows how to fix things so the only thing I need to hire someone for is to redo the roof.

My town was called "a state of emergency" and apparently made some international papers as well. 

Sorry if this is long, I just needed to get it out somewhere.

 

37400800_10157646435718275_1804583487835996160_o.jpg

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WOw thats crazy! I can't believe this just happened. Thank goodness theres just aesthetic damage right? How are you and your husband doing? How are your cats?

I dont know much about tornados, but I did just recently learned about tornado alleys. Does your area experience a lot of tornados? 

 

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I am so sorry you had to go through such a scary situation. I hope you, your husband, your cats, and family are ok and that help will come to you to get your yard cleared out and if the Insurance Company is still stone-walling you (believe me I know that routine too well from Harvey), find other townspeople that have that company and work together to be a large squeaky wheel they better deal with. I know the uneasy feeling you have about-what if this happens again? and to combat that feeling, I spent a lot of time helping friends clean out their apartments, sorted clothes collected at schools to help those who ended up with nothing, and did whatever I could to help my community to get back to normal. This helped me to "get back" to normal and just appreciate that my family made it through the hurricane without losing anyone, thanks be to God.

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Ugh, I'm so sorry for what you're going through. I live in Missouri and have been through many a close call with twisters, although thankfully my immediate family have never been directly impacted, but I've got friends who have. I can't imagine what it's like to come home and find that kind of destruction. Glad it sounds like at least no one was hurt. Are you anywhere near the big Vermeer plant in Pella that got hit? My brother in law works there and my sister in law sent some pictures of the damage, it was insane.

I must say though, from the pic you posted I think your house is lovely (probaly even more so when it's not just been tornadoed, obviously). It reminds me a lot of my grandparent's old house (also in Iowa). I love the older country style homes you see in all the midwestern small towns. Keep your head up and stay strong, tornados are a royal pain but you and your family are stronger than a stupid storm!

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Wow, that's some scary stuff, I honestly don't know how I'd cope in a situation like that, this kind of stuff happens so rarely in the UK just thinking about it makes me head go :confused: Your poor house D:< That's an impressive pic, for all the wrong reasons... one to keep for the family archive?

Huge relief that it's not so much worse, but that's kind of cold comfort when your life's still been turned upside-down, isn't it..

I agree on the lovely house. ☺️ Is it a Victorian? I'm just going by the shingles I can see where the siding's come off.

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I live in central Nebraska, one of the many areas dubbed 'Tornado Alley', we tend to get one in the area every year.   Mostly out in corn fields, no serious damage.   Every couple years is something serious with homes destroyed and people hurt.   About a week back a big storm went through, I'm not sure if officially there was a tornado, but several homes in the town north of here were destroyed.   My house just had leaves blown around, but the surrounding fields were destroyed by hail damage.   Went from a nice crop to nothing.   We've had troubles in years past, but thankfully insurance was always very helpful.

Looks like you got hit pretty bad, but at least everything's still standing.  I'd recommend taking a look at your foundation.   Massive wind like that can twist the entire house, cause cracks in the foundation.  Likely not enough to make the house a danger, but can let water and cold in where used to be secure.

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On 8/7/2018 at 1:12 PM, Kute said:

WOw thats crazy! I can't believe this just happened. Thank goodness theres just aesthetic damage right? How are you and your husband doing? How are your cats?

I dont know much about tornados, but I did just recently learned about tornado alleys. Does your area experience a lot of tornados? 

 

It's thankfully just aesthetic from what we've seen. We've been noticing a lot more cracks in the walls and ceilings now though. We're all doing okay, just super stressed out. My poor cat Ollie is now terrified of storms. When we first got to the house after it hit we were worried something happened to him because we could not find him anywhere. It seriously took us at least 20 minutes to find him in the house. Doesn't help that he's pretty much an all black cat, and is a pro at hiding. 

My area they aren't very common, but also common. Mostly when tornadoes do touch down they're in cornfields. However this particular time was not. There were 27 reported tornadoes the day of the storm that all touched down in Iowa. Three different towns were hit but unfortunately my town was the worst hit of the three. The last one that had this type of catastrophic damage that was close to us was 12 years ago I believe. 

On 8/7/2018 at 5:15 PM, iheartsaku said:

Oh wow, that is pretty scary.... Did anyone get hurt? I hope you and all your family are alright (and the rest of the people in your town).

Surprisingly enough, no one was hurt or killed from it. I suppose I should take that back, there was one person who ended up getting hurt trying to assist with clean up. But yea, no one was critically injured, mostly just seems to be mentally hurt (if that makes any sense). We're all okay, the first few days after it happened a lot of people around town just had the same solemn look on their face. I personally was depressed about it. That's the best way to describe how I feel about it. I am however, incredibly lucky. I live on the corner and just looking down to the other corner.. You see so many roofs with tarps on them. Besides the apartment building on my side of the street I think we are the only house that didn't need to have a tarp on the roof. Everyone in town seems to be doing better, or at the very least we are all recovering.

On 8/7/2018 at 11:36 PM, midnight_spell360 said:

I am so sorry you had to go through such a scary situation. I hope you, your husband, your cats, and family are ok and that help will come to you to get your yard cleared out and if the Insurance Company is still stone-walling you (believe me I know that routine too well from Harvey), find other townspeople that have that company and work together to be a large squeaky wheel they better deal with. I know the uneasy feeling you have about-what if this happens again? and to combat that feeling, I spent a lot of time helping friends clean out their apartments, sorted clothes collected at schools to help those who ended up with nothing, and did whatever I could to help my community to get back to normal. This helped me to "get back" to normal and just appreciate that my family made it through the hurricane without losing anyone, thanks be to God.

I am just so glad that neither of us were home. I know if I was I would be a total basket case. I am so thankful that everyone on my dad's team at work came and helped us. It was just us 5 (me. my husband, my dad/step-mom, and mom) for a while and it felt like we were never going to get done. I haven't found anyone else that has the same company as me, but I will defiantly have to ask around. My adjuster has been amazing, my main issue is the amount of money I'm getting. I am so sorry that you went through Harvey, I couldn't imagine having to deal with that. You're right, I still do have that uneasy feeling that it's going to happen again. Have you ever heard the saying that a tornado sounds like a freight train? It's so true. Several, several years ago at my dad's house there was a really bad thunderstorm. I remember him yelling at my sister and I to get down to the basement, hearing the panic in his voice, and then hearing what sounded like a train. Storm damage people came down and said it was straight line winds, but we don't believe them. I've been meaning to help around the community but I'm trying to get everything back in order here as well. I feel mostly back to "normal" but, theres always going to be that little bit of doubt in the back of my mind.

I am glad that you and your family ended up okay after the hurricane, and that you didn't lose anyone. 

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On 8/8/2018 at 12:20 AM, Sarah_S said:

Oh no! Are your family and cats okay? I'm so sorry that happened but glad you're okay!

Thankfully my parents and my husbands live out of town so they were unaffected. One of my cats is terrified of storms now, and I'm really not a big fan of them now either. My other cat and my husband don't care when storms come though. It could have been way worse. A guy that works where I do.. he lived just down the street from me and he had major roof damage. Makes me sad for him, and all the more thankful that my house didn't fare worse.

On 8/8/2018 at 1:01 AM, DragonPhoenix said:

Ugh, I'm so sorry for what you're going through. I live in Missouri and have been through many a close call with twisters, although thankfully my immediate family have never been directly impacted, but I've got friends who have. I can't imagine what it's like to come home and find that kind of destruction. Glad it sounds like at least no one was hurt. Are you anywhere near the big Vermeer plant in Pella that got hit? My brother in law works there and my sister in law sent some pictures of the damage, it was insane.

I must say though, from the pic you posted I think your house is lovely (probaly even more so when it's not just been tornadoed, obviously). It reminds me a lot of my grandparent's old house (also in Iowa). I love the older country style homes you see in all the midwestern small towns. Keep your head up and stay strong, tornados are a royal pain but you and your family are stronger than a stupid storm!

I couldn't even begin to describe how it felt to come home and see it. My mom and I both work on the side of town that did not get hit (thank goodness) and she's the one who called and told me how bad it was. Both her and my husband made it to the house before I did. Hearing a description versus seeing it for yourself is so different. I did A LOT of crying that day. Even called back to work and cried telling them the whole scope. It's just crazy no one got hurt. Especially at the Lennox and JBS plants. Pella is between an hour to two away from me. I've seen photos of the damage there, it's just sad to see.

Aw, thank you! It's been a long project. I'm a little ticked off because I was soooo close to being done with repainting the entire outside of the house. All I had left was two sections of the top story (the one on the photo, and then one other side). Now I'm looking at probably having to re-side the whole house. ? However insurance isn't giving me enough so I might have to just patch . We're defiantly stronger now, and there's still a long way to go. Thank you for the encouragement! It means a lot. :)

On 8/8/2018 at 7:13 AM, jellysundae said:

Wow, that's some scary stuff, I honestly don't know how I'd cope in a situation like that, this kind of stuff happens so rarely in the UK just thinking about it makes me head go :confused: Your poor house D:< That's an impressive pic, for all the wrong reasons... one to keep for the family archive?

Huge relief that it's not so much worse, but that's kind of cold comfort when your life's still been turned upside-down, isn't it..

I agree on the lovely house. ☺️ Is it a Victorian? I'm just going by the shingles I can see where the siding's come off.

That emoji definitely describes how I felt. The next day we came back to start more of the clean-up process and I didn't even know where to begin. Sometimes I look at my house and still think that. It's been 3 weeks and I'm still not done cleaning everything up. :s  We are still finding shards of broken glass EVERYWHERE. I am for sure keeping it for the archive. It'll be a great story to tell my kids (once I have them) someday. 

It is a little bit of a cold comfort. However, I choose to look at the flip-side of things. I knew when I bought the house 3 years ago that I was eventually going to need to re-shingle the house. Now I don't have to worry about paying for it because my insurance will. :) Same with my kitchen window that got destroyed, I was going to get that replaced eventually but now insurance paid for it so I didn't have to. :) 

I'm not sure if it considered Victorian or not. I know it's an old house, just turned 100 this year to be exact. I love the siding on the top half that it revealed and I'm hoping it wont' be to expensive to fix/duplicate it. (The holes are from when they must have blown in insulation)

On 8/8/2018 at 8:00 AM, Rayd1978 said:

I live in central Nebraska, one of the many areas dubbed 'Tornado Alley', we tend to get one in the area every year.   Mostly out in corn fields, no serious damage.   Every couple years is something serious with homes destroyed and people hurt.   About a week back a big storm went through, I'm not sure if officially there was a tornado, but several homes in the town north of here were destroyed.   My house just had leaves blown around, but the surrounding fields were destroyed by hail damage.   Went from a nice crop to nothing.   We've had troubles in years past, but thankfully insurance was always very helpful.

Looks like you got hit pretty bad, but at least everything's still standing.  I'd recommend taking a look at your foundation.   Massive wind like that can twist the entire house, cause cracks in the foundation.  Likely not enough to make the house a danger, but can let water and cold in where used to be secure.

That's about how it is for us. Mostly out in the corn or soy fields if they do touch down. The last serious one I can remember is Parkersburg which happened I think 10-12 years ago. That one though was an EF-5, ours that came through was an EF-3 . It's common to get some serious winds here during thunderstorms but, nothing that caused major damage. It's usually just limbs down and leaved blown around. My main issue with the insurance is that they are from Ohio. It'd be so nice to have something with a local office but, can't really do much about it right now. My car insurance was great. The house..  not so much. Main issue is I have cash value on the house, which then means that they take x amount out of what I'd get for "Depreciation" . Where as, I had full coverage on the car due to the fact that I had to because I had a loan on it.

Thanks for the tip! I didn't even think to check the house foundation. I didn't even think about the possibility of it twisting the house either. I know the winds twisted part of our garage so I wouldn't be surprised if it would have shifted the house a little bit. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Sorry to hear about that. Last night we got a tornado warning in my area. My brother, our cats and myself all went down to the basement. I brought six of my Beanie Boos with me for comfort (I'm terrified of tornadoes so I really needed a coping skill). Our cats were meowing like crazy, my brother kept an eye on his weather app and we are okay.

I'm shocked that my house didn't lose power. Did you lose power?

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  • 3 weeks later...

WOAH! I'm glad your house wasn't leveled! Amazing that the neighbors garage was IN your yard too. I live in WI and I think around the time you posted this, we had a LOT of tornadoes. Initially the count was 3, but then it was studied further, and the count rose to 16, and could maybe go higher. Fortunately, no damage where I live, but when I was a teenager, we had a tornado kind of skipping through the town. Lots of damage, mainly in old, beautiful and LARGE trees being downed. Power was out for about 4 days. We lost a few LARGE tree limbs at home, and got a small hole in the roof. Tornadoes are such a pain, and we in the US get them more frequently than pretty much any other nation in the world. I don't really recall WHY that is, but it was some report I heard about last year I think.

I don't mention my hometown by name, but we are one of the cities that, if Tornado Alley were to continue and extend to the Northeast of where it stops, I'd be practically in the middle of it at one point. The REALLY odd thing about ALL those tornadoes in the same storm, is that I can't recall hearing ANY tornado warnings for the area THIS YEAR. So to sudden;y have over a dozen at pretty much the same time is a bit of a surprise.

I hope the insurance will cover all your damages. And hopefully clean-up and repairs are either well underway or done by now. So you and your family can get back to a sense of normalcy.

Best of luck!

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8 hours ago, Aquamentis12 said:

Tornadoes are such a pain, and we in the US get them more frequently than pretty much any other nation in the world. I don't really recall WHY that is, but it was some report I heard about last year I think.

I can tell you something that might astound you, because... the country that gets the most tornadoes is...

*drum roll*

The United Kingdom‼

?

Of course because they're here they're generally polite and refined, the meteorological equivalent of a quiet cough or genteel clearing of the throat maybe, but measuring by land area, the United Kingdom has a higher rate than any other country. Kind of a mind-blower, isn't it?!

I don't suppose it's actually possible for Dorothy Gale level twisters here, I suspect we just don't have the landmass required to create the conditions for something of that kind of scale to be able to form. I'm pleased about this! When they are big enough to do damage, and happen in an urban area,  they do a LOT because we're pretty tightly-packed on our little patch of the planet.

 

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20 hours ago, jellysundae said:

I can tell you something that might astound you, because... the country that gets the most tornadoes is...

*drum roll*

The United Kingdom‼

?

Of course because they're here they're generally polite and refined, the meteorological equivalent of a quiet cough or genteel clearing of the throat maybe, but measuring by land area, the United Kingdom has a higher rate than any other country. Kind of a mind-blower, isn't it?!

I don't suppose it's actually possible for Dorothy Gale level twisters here, I suspect we just don't have the landmass required to create the conditions for something of that kind of scale to be able to form. I'm pleased about this! When they are big enough to do damage, and happen in an urban area,  they do a LOT because we're pretty tightly-packed on our little patch of the planet.

 

Huh! I must be remembering what I heard wrongly then. Maybe they meant per-capita for the US? I mean the size of both nations are very different. I wonder where I could find out exactly what that thing was I heard about the North American continent having so many.. Oh well, if you say it's the UK, that's OK with me. They may have been talking more than just tornadoes... but dang it's frustrating when I can't recall more about something like that. Sorry, I must be getting old or something. lol See? Late night/early morning and I'm already rambling nonsense. :P lol

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7 hours ago, Aquamentis12 said:

Huh! I must be remembering what I heard wrongly then. Maybe they meant per-capita for the US? I mean the size of both nations are very different. I wonder where I could find out exactly what that thing was I heard about the North American continent having so many.. Oh well, if you say it's the UK, that's OK with me. They may have been talking more than just tornadoes... but dang it's frustrating when I can't recall more about something like that. Sorry, I must be getting old or something. lol See? Late night/early morning and I'm already rambling nonsense. :P lol

I think it's all just very confusing, because the US has LOADS more, obviously, it's all down to the country size. We have the most per square inch, as it were, lol. You guys have a lot more, but you're SO much bigger than us that the ratio lessens. If the US had the same tornado:landmass ratio as us you'd all be blown away by now, wouldn't you, because yours would all be massive things, not the generally short-lived and small ones that we get.

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On 8/18/2018 at 4:13 PM, Naamah said:

Sorry to hear about that. Last night we got a tornado warning in my area. My brother, our cats and myself all went down to the basement. I brought six of my Beanie Boos with me for comfort (I'm terrified of tornadoes so I really needed a coping skill). Our cats were meowing like crazy, my brother kept an eye on his weather app and we are okay.

I'm shocked that my house didn't lose power. Did you lose power?

We were without power for 4 days. I actually got some footage of the winds (before the tornado actually came through) and it's pretty freaky. If my dad was not a jack of all trades, we would have been without power a lot longer and I would have had to pay an electrician about $1,300 to reattach the meter back onto my house. I've always been nervous of storms and now I'm about 1000x more leery of them. I'm glad that you guys are okay. 

On 9/4/2018 at 12:02 AM, Aquamentis12 said:

WOAH! I'm glad your house wasn't leveled! Amazing that the neighbors garage was IN your yard too. I live in WI and I think around the time you posted this, we had a LOT of tornadoes. Initially the count was 3, but then it was studied further, and the count rose to 16, and could maybe go higher. Fortunately, no damage where I live, but when I was a teenager, we had a tornado kind of skipping through the town. Lots of damage, mainly in old, beautiful and LARGE trees being downed. Power was out for about 4 days. We lost a few LARGE tree limbs at home, and got a small hole in the roof. Tornadoes are such a pain, and we in the US get them more frequently than pretty much any other nation in the world. I don't really recall WHY that is, but it was some report I heard about last year I think.

I don't mention my hometown by name, but we are one of the cities that, if Tornado Alley were to continue and extend to the Northeast of where it stops, I'd be practically in the middle of it at one point. The REALLY odd thing about ALL those tornadoes in the same storm, is that I can't recall hearing ANY tornado warnings for the area THIS YEAR. So to sudden;y have over a dozen at pretty much the same time is a bit of a surprise.

I hope the insurance will cover all your damages. And hopefully clean-up and repairs are either well underway or done by now. So you and your family can get back to a sense of normalcy.

Best of luck!

I'm glad my house wasn't leveled either. I, fortunately, live on the side of town that didn't get full strength. There are 2 houses about 2 blocks down, that got condemned and one of them has already been completely torn down. My town is known for it's tree canopies along the streets and now... well lets just say a lot of the really old trees are gone. I can't imagine having holes in my roof. Tornadoes really are such a pain. That's crazy that the count kept raising higher and higher. The day it hit here there were 27 recorded Tornadoes in Iowa. :0 

Insurance is not really covering all of my damages. Thankfully everything is pretty well picked up but now I'm dealing with having to find a NEW contractor to do the roof since the guy we had picked out isn't answering us back. I'm just glad we didn't give him any money. It's just super frustrating to have to look again when everyone is so backed up because of this. And the fact that like it or not, winter is getting closer and I need to get it done. The windows I can deal with if I'm unable to get it done before winter. My main concern is my roof and my garage. We discovered the other day that even if we lock it... one push of the door and it'll open. Plus it's starting to lean quite a bit and I'm nervous that a heavy snowfall could cause it to topple over. 

Thanks, I'm going to need all of the luck I can get at this rate. 

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