Tornado!

It’s a bright and beautiful Wednesday morning. I’m tiptoeing around the house trying to get the house back in order before the kiddos wake. The house has been somewhat neglected the last few days. We’ve been….. busy.

On Sunday, we lounged around the house keeping an eye on the weather. Radar showed big storms moving in, 4 inch hail! But the skies were clear and it didn’t even rain. We tucked the kids into bed and just as I flopped onto the mattress, at about 11:30, both Tim and my cell phones rang loudly with an alert. SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY the message read. Dangerous tornado on the ground.

Well, shoot I was gonna sleep.

I called Kari and she answered saying yeah we’re coming in. They are in the camper right next to the house.

Next I called Amanda, who lives in the camper just down the drive. She was already walking in to the house because she was felt the weather was odd and heavy and wanted to sleep in the basement anyway. Such good intuition I’d say.

I called Adam who lives in the tiny house down yonder and he said he wasn’t home and I said good, stay where you are.

We basically forced our tired and annoyed husbands downstairs while listening to a live report on the tornado, moving towards us at about 30mph. “We could be sleeping, y’all are so dramatic,  can we JUST go to bed.”

Such are the men in are family, unbothered by anything threatening like a little mile wide tornado.

The YouTube live sure kept saying Plevna over and over. “This is extremely dangerous. This tornado could wipe Plevna off the map.”

Tim joked that he’s not sure Plevna’s even on the map.

We pushed and shoved the guys into the bedroom in the basement and put the sleeping babies on the floor between the two beds and pulled a mattress over them. Then, the lights flicked off and everyone sat completely still. What was that, that roar? We heard it coming, like a freight train, getting louder and we heard crashing and then, we heard it fading away quickly. Oh yeah, that was a tornado, not a doubt about it. We sat in the dark, in complete silence for a good 10 seconds before Luke jumped up and ran up the stairs. Within seconds we heard him saying that the huge tree outside our home was gone.

It had about a 5 foot trunk and it was about 3 foot from Luke’s camper, fallen away from the camper. Had it fallen the other way it would have crushed the camper and the house. The minivan and Adams truck were right next to it and completely unscratched from the massive tree that lay sprawled over the driveway and the yard.

Wow! Thank you God! We ran past the tree to see a circus of sheep and chicks and dogs and pigs running and yelling and chirping and looking very wet and afraid. The fence! It was down. The locust grove! Oh! It was picked through  and every other tree was down or snapped in half. The chicken pen was flipped and a 100 plus chicks were everywhere.

I ran past the grove, further down the drive. A huge tree had fallen….. would you believe it, right next to Manda’s camper. But the camper was fine. And Adams tiny house? Fine! Thank you God!

Luke jumped onto a four wheeler and  after awhile came back with news. His shed roof, completely gone. The fences, all down. The horses? Couldn’t find them.

The next 2-3 hours were a blur of rounding up animals and assessing damage. Tim pointed to the stock trailer, parked neatly next to the driveway. Where’s the other one? He had borrowed Ephraim’s trailer and parked it right there. Did Luke move it? Nope, it was there last night. It was gone. We still haven’t found it. I mean, we found the wheels, and the jack we found about 1/4 mile away. A sidepanel may have been up in the trees 3/4 mile away… but it was hard to tell.

I flopped into bed with the kids around 2am. The others didn’t get to bed until 4. Everyone was up at sunrise and man. The power of a tornado. Power lines were down, the mile of new fence the boys had finished just last week  had twisted and turned and was down at least 3/4 mile. Trees with 3 foot trunks had lifted out of the earth and were flung 59 foot.

So the last few days have heard nothing but nonstop chainsaws while the boys cleared the trees and rebuilt the fence. They were very discouraged at the mangled trees and fences and shed and trash that blew across the land. Metal high up in the trees, a life jacket stuck in the fence, a tent, a book, a coat… but our houses were untouched.

Plevna took a very hard hit. Houses were flattened and trailers overturned. Many people lost everything and there’s lots of work to be done. Our community has banned together and new roofs are already completed just 2 days after the storm. We praise God for sparing our house and campers. What a miracle! Now we move on with life, and though the trees sure aren’t as pretty and we still have lots of clearing to do, we are beyond blessed.

Plevna still needs help, support and prayers. No fatalities have been reported and we are so grateful for Gods protection and awed by the power of the tornado.