Tornado Videos and therapy?

 

I am going to say that I am doing this as a way to cope with what I have been thru these past 6 months but I wanted to share some videos that I am watching literally for the first time since the tornado.

We werent there.

Thank God.

In the first video, our house is the one with the dark gray Escape in the driveway and the white truck pulled part way in. The white truck belongs to a Mechanical Company. The owner is a friend of the family and he was one of the first people on site to help turn off gas. Notice all the missing windows just blown out- frames and all. The debris everywhere. Dont know if you can see the tub sitting on our front lawn.

Aarons car is the green one in the street. It was rotated 90 degrees when the storm hit and pushed down the street.

You can hear the shrills of the smoke alarms going off- everywhere! I still have a huge problem with storms. I still freak when I hear smoke alarms going off (the dumpster across the street had discarded smoke alarms going off one day- made me want to puke). I still look to the sky when they test the weather siren the first Saturday of every month.

Notice the house directly across the street from ours is completely missing its second story. This is a good marker for seeing our house in the second video.

In the second video taken from what I am assuming is a News helicopter, you can see the roof missing off of the back of our house.

You can see the Escape in the driveway and Aarons car in the street with debris all around it. In this video you can see how lucky we really were that 1. we were not home and 2. that our house for whatever reason did not sustain more damage

I am still dealing with some of this "guilt" on a day to day basis. That we didnt actually have to go thru this. That we werent home. That my kids dont have the trauma but others do. That we didnt have the construction issues. That we are back in our house and others are just starting. That God shined down on us for WHATEVER reason for this ONE thing and made it easy(ier) for us to deal with.

Posting these is a bit of therapy for me. It has taken me 6 months to watch these. And honestly I didnt know how bad our house was (in the back) until I saw these.

Also I should note that the house that is completely gone in the video (next to the one that is missing its second story) on the corner is just starting to get built. The owners daughter sold the lot and foundation. It will be great to have a new house there and not to be reminded constantly of the damage we endured. And BTW...the house that is completely gone? The old man was HOME at the time the tornado hit. His nurse and her daughter pulled up in the white truck JUST before the storm hit. They made it to the basement seconds before the tornado struck and held onto the basement railing for dear life.

This is something that is now a part of me. Of who I am. Of my make up.

And I just want to share and pass the warning onto you.

Please. If you hear sirens dont run to the front porch to watch storms roll in (like we used to do). Take them seriously.

Take cover.

One tip a lot of us do now is to have helmets (like for football) stored in the basement just in case. Why not store them in the basement instead of the garage? You could actually use them in case of emergency that way.

Also maybe invest in a weather radio if you live in tornado or hurricane prone areas. Many of my neighbors have them now.

Sorry for the soapbox and double post today, but with fall storms coming and rolling in, I thought it would be a good reminder.

Plus it is good (for me) to see how far we have come.