You Can’t Out Run a Tornado

I don’t like tornadoes. My daughter and I had gone to the movies to see ATL in O’Fallon, Illinois just outside of East St Louis, when I noticed a strong cool breeze moving about us, afterwards. It felt eerie to me so I told my daughter that we needed to get out of there and go home. I called my wife to ask her if she needed anything, she said that she wanted me to stop by Wal-Mart for some sort of special glue so that she could finish braiding a daughter of her friend’s hair. I decided to stick to my initial thought to get out of O’Fallon and so I headed over to Belleville’s Wal-Mart. There was a fast moving funny looking cloud out on the horizon to the west of us in St Louis so I told my daughter that we had to make haste (she thought that I was over exaggerating the situation).

We had originally planned to get something to eat, too, so I pulled into McDonalds drive-thru after leaving Wal-Mart, but the wind was picking up so quickly I decided that I was not going to leave us stuck in a line when the storm turned ugly (to which it was starting to). So I jetted out of the line while my daughter looked at me with dissatisfaction. I glanced over at the fast moving cloud and strangely enough it had covered a lot of ground in that short period of time between leaving Wal-Mart and was visibility moving upon us. Foolish as it may seem I thought that I had time to stop at Little Caesars and pick up a $5 to go pizza. The young lady at the register (bless her heart) was very concerned about the weather and verbally told her boss that she was going home. I had to wait for one customer ahead of me to order and as soon as I picked up my pizza I headed out the door. The wind blew so strongly sideways that I barely made it to the car. I hopped in (daughter in car with engine already running) and quickly traversed on to the main road to head home.

I told my daughter that a tornado was around us some where, and said that she needed to watch out for anything flying through the air because we were going to have to jump in a ditch (there’s nothing but cornfields around here). The wind was picking up speed, and I tried to out run the storm doing 55 mph but it was right on my tail so I drove 80 mph or more to no avail we were enveloped in this fast moving storm. I watched a flock of birds suddenly dip from about 20 feet in the air to down about a foot off of the ground in a second, and I lost all of my manhood and prayed out loud. The car felt like it wanted to fly as the wind hit it like a wall of water. Everything loose was moving across the street in front of us, and I could see our home in the distance across the cornfields. I told my daughter to keep looking out for anything strange and to call home to tell her mother to take cover in the shelter.

When I arrived at Scott AFB, Security Forces were securing the gate for closure and one of them hollered for us to seek shelter. I burned rubber through the gate after getting a quick confirmation from the guard. By this time the storm was in full force with hail pounding on the windshield and trees leaning over consistently to one side. I pulled up in the driveway. My daughter and I ran into the house, and to my surprise my wife, son, and the little girl that was getting her hair braided were in the living room sitting (chillin’) as if nothing was going on. I ordered (lovingly as possible under the situation) everyone into the shelter. After securing everyone I wanted to listen out for that distinct sound of a tornado coming that everyone speaks about on the news. I looked out of the front door first and saw a foolish neighbor of mine chasing down his kid’s Jungle Gym set. I went to the back of the house and looked out the back door window to see if I could observe anything, and my 60 pound 3-seat swinging chair set was almost two houses down separated into two parts. I looked up in the sky and all sorts of small debris were flying around, (roof shingles I believe) but I wanted to check the radar on TV, too, before I went back into the shelter. The main part of the storm had passed and I saw that we would basically be in the clear shortly so I kept my family in the shelter and continued to observe the weather. Soon it was over and we all sat down for pizza.

The next day at work I discussed the storm with co-workers and one of them stated that the construction debris in the new subdivision where my house was under construction, too, took flight and damaged a lot of homes. A 2x4 piece of wood flew through the window and stuck into the living room wall of one of the homes, and many of the roofs were damaged. Later on that day I was in my graduate class talking about the storm, again. A classmate said that she was in Fairview Heights, at the Steak-n-Shake restaurant when all of a sudden the power lines all bent over and some snapped while the wind raced down the street. The manager ordered everyone (25+) into the small men’s bathroom. When they finally were able to come out debris was every where and the K & G store across the street was destroyed. She talked about her ordeal in the bathroom, the sound of the wind, and that she had called her husband on her cell phone to see if he was okay. I told her about the ordeal we went through over in the Belleville area, but I had no ideal how close to my heart the situation would become later.

The next day I was at the library checking my emails, and there was one from a close friend of mine from O’Fallon stating that his wife and daughter were in the K & G when the tornado struck and the roof collapsed. He said that his wife and daughter were okay and that they had to climb out of a lot of rubble and downed power lines were every where. All of them had made it out except for one man that was killed, and that his wife was very distraught over the situation. I told my wife when I got home that we needed to do an intercessory prayer for them and everyone who had suffered more than others in this situation.

I sat and watched stories about the tornado on TV, and I’m telling you this story because before it happened to me so closely I was always the spectator watching it on the news (impersonal), but when it happens to you and someone you know—it makes you feel very aware of how precious our time on earth really is to us. I thank God for every second, minute, and hour.