Tornado at Work

Entry for the Friday Challenge for 4/03/09

Tornado at Work

This coming Monday will be April 13. Weather dot com is predicting rain and thunderstorms. Hopefully there won't be any tornadoes running around this time, since I am expecting a group of ladies to visit my home in the evening. Eleven years ago, that wasn't the case. In fact, I collided with a tornado that time.

I was working as a contract programmer with several part-time clients. I got a call from one of them. Someone was having a problem. I tried to talk her through some stuff over the phone, just to get more information about what she was experiencing, but she was one of those unfortunate computer users who cannot put into words what she is actually seeing on the screen. I remember another person once who kept telling me there was absolutely nothing on her screen. It was completely blank. I finally said, "Read me what your screen says." Then suddenly all kinds of error messages were gushing out of her mouth. Amazing.

Anyway, this user not only couldn't express what she was seeing, but she didn't want to take the time. She just wanted me to come and fix it. I got in my car and drove up there, but I didn't actually get to do any fixing.

The radio in the car was talking about tornadoes. Tornado warnings, tornado watches, and tornado touchdowns about five minutes before I reached my destination, and only a few miles west of where I was.

As I parked next to the back door, the employees were streaming out to go home. It was five o'clock, and they weren't wasting any time, wanting to get home before the storm hit. By the time I got in and logged on, there was only one other person left in the building with me - the CEO. I had no idea he was there, since his office was in the other side of the building. The office building was like a one-story strip mall, with the "stores" occupied by different companies.

As I tried to zero in on the problem program, I couldn't help but hear the storm outside. The room where I was working had concrete walls and no windows, but the noise kept getting louder. I decided to take a break and head for the rest room, which was the only small interior room I could think of.

Less than a minute after I settled myself on the floor in the last stall, the power went out. No windows in there, either, so I just kept sitting there wondering what was happening. That room had better sound protection. I heard a few loud bangs, but other than that I couldn't hear much of the storm. I felt my ears popping a few times, telling me there were pressure changes. It wasn't hard to figure out that there was a tornado very close at the least.

My main thought was, "What do I do now?" I actually had time to wonder what to do! That just doesn't seem right, somehow. The obvious answer was to pray. When you're helpless, there's only one place to turn. But what do you say? I mean, it's stupid to tell God that you're in a tornado, as if He doesn't know. All I could think of was, "God, I'm here."

It seemed like a long time sitting there wondering when it would be safe to come out, and then I heard a toilet flushing next door. That told me there was somebody else there, and he evidently thought it was safe, so I got out of there as fast as I could in the dark.

The CEO had watched the storm from his office, which had a full wall of window. He was very, very fortunate that all the damage was at the back of the building. The computer room where I had been working, had lost its roof, and it was raining. There was already an inch of water on the floor. We got busy carrying computers into the dryer part of the office. The AS/400 was sitting in the water, but I knew it had a few inches of empty space at the bottom of its case, so I wasn't worried about it. Days later, after everything was cleaned up and reconnected, it came back up fine.

The windows at the back of the office (past which I walked on my way to the rest room) were all broken. Shards of broken glass were stuck in the opposite wall like darts thrown at a target. There were even some in the upper part of a chair behind a desk, where an occupant's head would have rested.

I knew it was time to leave when I started smelling gas. That was when I got to see my car. It was an dark green Saturn, a beautiful emerald. Every inch of it was pock-marked by the river rocks that had been on the roof that was no longer there. Those rocks are round, reddish, about two to three inches in diameter. They were everywhere, all over the pavement, in my car, even on the dashboard under the windshield, which was the only window still in place. It was cracked badly, but still held. The other windows were all broken out, leaving broken glass both inside and outside the car.

Between the glass and the rocks on the pavement and the gas smell, which was just as bad outside as inside the building, I decided to leave my car there. That was the last straw for it, because it stayed there in the rain for two days before the cops would let me back in the parking lot to get it. The interior was soaked, and I'm allergic to mold and fungus. Time for a new car. My twelve and twelve was on the shelf under the back window, so it got soaked, too. But I dried it out, and it's okay. Warped but still readable. A reminder of God saving me again.


The weather service says:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lsx/climate/torcli/stlouis.php

A small tornado left a path of damage across west St. Louis County, from the WestPort area in Maryland Heights to near Ashby Road in Overland. Most of the damage was F0 in intensity; primarily damage to trees, power lines, roofs and some decks and porches. About 30 homes and 40 businesses suffered some type of damage. The F1 damage was limited to a small area near Lackland Road and Lindbergh Boulevard. The Carol House Furniture store suffered the most damage, losing part of a wall and the roof. Two nearby automobile dealerships had about 200 cars damaged. One school had roof damage and windows broken. The one injury occurred when a century-old oak tree crashed into the kitchen where a man was sitting. He was treated for head and leg injuries.

A storm chaser says:
http://www.siue.edu/~jfarley/chase413.htm