I feel like our government needs to fund repairs after natural disasters! Places like here expect storm damage and we should make a tax for it and have company’s already in place to start repairs.
Let me set the scene…
We are all dresses up, looking good. On our way to our son’s monumental elementary school graduation. Traffic is thick, but we make it in enough time for our son to attend his class dinner before the students are seated for the ceremony. We find our seats. Folks are ready to hoot and holler for their child’s accomplishments.
My son’s class will go up in the middle of the thing. The first class has lined up. Yay! Go students! Lights flicker. The crowd began to rumble a bit. Everyone calms down, phones start going off, alerting everyone that severe weather has hit our neighborhood. My phone doesn’t alert. I ask my sister was it an Amber Alert? No. My phone begins to sound off like the others. A tornado is in our area, and we need to shelter in place. The wind begins to whip, everyone gets uncomfortable. the lights go out. They come back on for a second and back out again. This is all happening so fast. Emergency lights turn on and the staff begins to ask for people to not go outside, stay where we are. Our group ushers out into the hallway to assess the state of the storm and outside is a blur. So much rain and wind. We remain in the hallway to allow the storm to pass. More people are pouring into the hallway. Word spread that a tree has fallen on a vehicle parked in the front of the parking lot. Folks become visibly unsettled, anxious even. I feel like everything happened in a fifteen-minute span. The wind slows and we can see outside. The rain lightens and people began to leave the school. We head out too.
The drive was slow. Not because of the rain but because of the debris. Tree limbs and flimsy fence panels are littered on the streets. All traffic lights are out on the roads leading home. There’s a trampoline on the shoulder of the freeway to our right. It was lifted from a nearby outdoor play place company. The trampoline became air born and landed on the freeway blocking the lane. As we ride, I’m driving, we just see more and more debris. An eighteen-wheeler is on its side to our left. It felt unreal. Barely any cars are driving on the roads. Pulling into our neighborhood, several large trees had been uprooted. Some blocking the streets others falling onto houses, leaving devastating damage.
Our home is safe. Our neighbors are out in the street, working together, removing large tree limbs. Humanity wins! People do come together in times of dispair. We get inside and assess our surroundings. No Power! The whole neighborhood is out. Thank goodness for daylight. The temperature has dropped. We all change our clothes into something move-around proof and head back outside. I grab a sweater, its cold. The tree that’s laying on a rooftop that we immediately noticed driving in is where we head first. There have been several severe storms since moving to Texas that we never experienced before. The devastation is palpable. Folks are all out in the streets assessing and observing. Several men are in action trying their best to move the limbs that they can. The community was communing. You never really realize the size of a thing until its dead smack in front of your face. Tree branches are humungous!
Night hits. My husband is back from getting gas for the generator. Sidenote: everyone should invest in one of those things. We also have a gas stove which allowed for cooking. Along with having a generator, I’m most grateful for clean running water. During the cold freeze, we had to boil water and that wasn’t fun. We needed to store the water that we boiled for drinking and bathing and that was challenging. After setting up the necessities and figuring out the luxuries, thanks to technology, we could access two televisions and used our hotspots to watch. Because the temperature had dropped significantly the first night was actually pleasant. It felt like a glamping trip.
Day two was adjusting to the aftermath and gaining better understanding of the storm. Looking up local news stations, learning about the surrounding areas. The weather was still good, making the day and night go as smoothly as possible. Day three is when things got real. This Texas heat! By the morning of the third day, upstairs was inhabitable. We also have a portable air conditioner that we set up to cool the downstairs off as best it could. We were comfortable. Falling back into power outage routine was like muscle memory, we are not new to this. We true to the hunker down storm life in Texas. Keep gas and get creative with time. It was the night of the third day that lead us to purchase a few fans too. The air conditioner couldn’t reach every corner and the humidity was kicking in.
Day four was surreal. The city was back to normal and there were pockets of neighborhoods that were still without power. Large pockets and scattered. So, some were without a care while others were suffering. School was back in session so we sent the kids to get a bit of normalness and hoped for power every day but on that day, we prayed that it would come back on. It did not! We had to get through another hot night.
Day five. The school picked up where they left off with the graduation during school hours so parents weren’t able to attend. Our daughter’s graduation had to be rescheduled. It was the day after our son’s original graduation and now it was on the same day. All day long, doing the prep for her graduation my fingers were crossed, hoping that the power would come back on. We sent the kiddos to school with everything they needed for the events during and after school because traffic was still terrible around us and there was no need for error. We could not just get back home or run up to the school if they needed or forgot something. It’s time to leave for the event and still no power. The sky was blue with no storm clouds in sight. We travel to the school. Sit through the graduation. catch up with friends and head home. We killed as much time as we could but home was where we all wanted to be.
On the ride back, I had to break it to the kids that we hadn’t gotten the power back up to us coming to the school and we did not know if it was back on yet. I must admit, even my morale was low but what can you do. My son definitely had the blues and so we prayed and thanked the Lord for the comforts we had experienced during such a trying time. Even though we all wanted the power back. We wanted to sleep comfortably in our own beds. Mundanely look in the fridge several times at the same options available to us. We just wanted what was normal. We had to face the fact that the power might still be out. That we would have had to bear another night of awkward sleep. We still fared better than most. We were together and functioning better than most. We understood that complaining wasn’t going to help us and no matter what conflicting emotions we were having it sucks to not have power.
As we drive home, we notice that every streetlight was working, and businesses were back running, and traffic was flowing. We drive into the neighborhood and pull into the driveway. I press the opener for the garage, and it opens!!!! We scream with joy.
Severe storms are happening more and more all over the country. If you can invest in a few of what I consider, essential items, generator, portable air conditioner, extension cords and fans, please do. Having access to electricity when power goes out helps tremendously.
Until next time…
Take Care of Yourself!
Something About Stephanie 