Thursday, September 23, 2010
Today's Free Write: Where were you when...
And:
Recount your Athens County tornado experience. Think about your senses: what were you seeing/hearing/smelling/touching/tasting(?) when all of this was going down. Keep in mind that the funnel cloud we see churning above Athens touched down barely over five miles away from us...
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ReplyDeleteWhen this bad weather hit i was in my room playing some Fifa. Then our RA came and knocked on our door and told us to go to the first floor. Once we got there, sirens started going wild. Police were speeding down the road with their sirens going alerting people to go inside. The first floor smelled of B.O because we had the whole building packed like sardines in this little hallway. It started to get really hot and people started to sweat. Some people were outside looking at the dark clouds. Above Tiffin, two clouds merged and started spinning but the dissipated. That was a pretty cool experience. Then all of a sudden rain just poured from the heavens. It was probably the hardest i have seen rain come down in a while. As i sat there, me and my buddy were getting pretty hungry so we went out the back door and sprinted through the rain and puddles to Shively to eat. The middle section was closed off because of leaking and they wouldnt let you sit near any windows in case they broke. So my buddy and I sat in front of the tv and ate our food. If I was going to die i wanted to die with a full stomach. Lucky for us a tornado never touched down on our campus. After the ordeal, my mom called me to see if i was ok and to see how everyone was. It was a pretty scary situation, but very cool at the same time.
ReplyDeleteWhen all of this was going down i was at my house in Albany which is about 15 miles from athens. So i wasnt too worried about it. I used to live in texas and when i lived there i went through about 4 tornados. The tornados where like 200 yards away from my house they were pretty bad. Back to this one though, I was watching Two and a half men when it all happened. So i didnt really know any of this happened until someone called and told me about it. It didnt even rain or blow wind at my house it was just a dark sky. When i found out about it i was kinda shocked because there hasnt been a "real" tornado in Athens for as long as i can remember. I say "real" because some people consider bad wind a tornado but this is the first one to actually tear stuff up horribly. Like i said i didnt really hear anything about the tornadoes until a friend of mine called to tell me about it. In albany we didnt have any sirens that went off so yea. Albany gave us the shaft on this whole ordeal, kind of lame if you ask me. That night though one of my good friends was at the Athens high school watching a soccer game and he said it was really scary because thats where alot of the damaged occurred. He said people were freaking out and everything. So if i were there i bet it would have been pretty freaky. Apparently the principal of my high school was there and his brand new Toyota Tacoma got slammed by a tree and got totaled. That would suck, but good thing it wasnt my car or else id be pretty upset.
ReplyDeleteMe and my roomates were all just in our room talking to eachother when all of a sudden the tornado alarms started going off. We were all really confused and thought nothing of it. They went off another time and we started wondering if it was serious. We still stayed upstairs wondering what was going to happen, then the RAs started knocking on everyone's door telling them the same thing, "everyone needs to get to the basement there is a tornado warning." My roomates and floormates started freaking out, practically crying. In Columbus we have a lot of tornado watches so I wasn't too scared because nothing ever really happens, so I was the one calming them down. When we went to the basement everyone was just goofing off on their laptops and a couple playing the piano. Me and one of my roomates stepped outside and that's when we really got nervous, it was so dark and pouring rain. At one point outside it was really dark but really silent, a girl outside told us that meant that we were in the eye of the storm...this didn't make us feel much better. We went inside and went on our laptops and looked up the picture of the weather and saw that Athens was under the category of "extreme" weather. Nobody in the hall really took the tornado too seriously and kept going upstairs and the RA's had to make a couple rounds gathering them back up again to go into the basement. The weather cleared up really fast after it passed and turned out to be a good night to go out.
ReplyDeleteI was in my dorm getting ready to go for a run, and right before i was about to leave the RA came into our rooms and told us that we needed to be downstairs because there was a tornado warning until 7:45pm. but that was later changed to 8:30. basically it was raining outside and I was cramped inside the ground level floor of Armbruster with basically everyone else that lives there. I wanted to go out and run anyway, but the RA's warned us that there would be a lot of problems for anyone that left so I was forced to stay there until the tornado warning was gone. in total, the warning lasted around an hour and 45 minutes. a couple hours later I found out that the tornado touched down around East State street, and thats when the situation finally sunk in.
ReplyDeleteWhen the tornado warning first went off I was originally sleeping in my bed and one of my roommates came in and woke me up and told me I had to go downstairs. I remember I was really angry and just stayed in my bed at first because back in Toledo there are tornado warnings all the time so I've gotten used to always hearing sirens but never taking shelter or anything. But eventually I got up and was one of the last people to walk down to the first floor. When I was on the first floor, we were all huddled against the walls and it was really hot because of all of the body heat. Eventually I got up because I was bored of just sitting there and I walked towards the window to see what all the fuss was about- when I looked outside, I couldn't see anything. It was pitch black. And I remember thinking that it was really weird because it was only approximately 7:30; still, I was really annoyed that we had to sit on the first floor for around an hour and a half, waiting for the "all clear." However, the day after the tornado, I saw this video and realized how close it really was to us.
ReplyDeleteMy tornado experience was a first for me. I have never been anywhere near a tornado or potential tornado. I was coming out of Shively after eating dinner with my friends. While we were walking out I noticed the sky looked greenish and we caught the tail end of the alarm, so we didn't know what was going on. It was really windy and the voice came over the speaker again telling us to take cover indoors as there was a tornado warning. My friends and I stood outside observing the wind and the massive rotation. We have never experienced it before, so this was a new feeling to us; almost an adrenaline rush because we could be in danger. The smell was clean and crisp as the wind was swirling above us and the rain pouring down. There was rotation all around us. We walked back to our dorm thinking that this storm probably wasn't a big deal. But as we got back, everyone was on the first floor bracing for a tornado. I remember texting my parents and letting them know. To me, I thought this experience was crazy and fun. Fun because nothing happened to OU, and it was a new experience. But the aftermath of the tornado let us all realize what actually happened to local towns and homes. The tornado destroyed a lot of what they had. My friends and I sat on the first floor with everyone else in the dorm for about a good hour and a half. We all complained because as time went on, we cared less and less about the tornado because it probably wouldn't hit and just wanted to get the hell out of the dorm. My tornado experience was good in the way that I was put in the way of danger and gave me a sort of adrenaline rush; but bad in the way that it hurt the surrounding areas around OU.
ReplyDeleteMy room mate and i were just sitting in our dorm room with the air on and window closed when i was wondering what the noise i kept hearing was. We both just thought it was some car alarm or just some random other noise one would hear on campus. So we ignored it and then we hear "tornado warning everyone down to the first floor" coming from the 2nd floor. we both instantly just got annoyed because we did not feel like leaving our room. but since our door was open there was nothing we could do and we knew we hd to go down to the first floor. once we got down to the first floor I saw that everyone else from my building was crammed in to this small hallway. to say the least it didnt make me feel any safer being down there and it just smelled of crammed people in a 10 foot long hallway. As we sat there hearing the R.A. tell us that the warning had been extended numerous times i just remembered not feeling scared or shocked at all. I was just annoyed i couldnt go out that night if this warning kept up. So my friend and I got the idea to quietly sneak away and with out notice we made it back up to the fourth floor and pretty much just ignored the rest of the warning.
ReplyDeleteAbout 10 minutes before the sirens went off in Athens, my mom sent me a text saying, tornado warning for Athens County. Head for cover! Me, being the curious person that I am went straight out to my balcony at RiverPark Apartments along with all my neighbors and watched as everything unfolded. Me and my roommate pulled up our lawn chairs and cooked hotdogs on our balcony. Maybe not the smartest decision but I like a little excitement in my life. Once I saw the storm head my way from The Plains, I whipped out my video camera on my phone and began to film what was going on. I had a friend over at the time and she was extremely scared and she decided to watch MTV to distract her from what was going on but it was to hard not to know what was happening. For a good 1 or 2 hours it was just off an on downpours and clouds that looked like it could drop a tornado at any second. It was AWESOME! Unfortunately I didn't witness a tornado but I did see a funnel cloud head directly over my apartment, which I have a picture of. Next time, I hope to see the actually touchdown!
ReplyDeleteWhen the tornado hit the plains, i was going down to my basement. All i heard was my dad telling us to go down in the basement because a tornado was coming. Some people said that when the tornado passed it sounded like a train. All i saw was darkness because the power went out. What i tasted in my mouth was water and tears. I was touching the walls and some games to get to a bathroom in my basement. I was so worried about my aunt and two cousins because they live in a mobile home. They were going to go into athens to get some food. We kept calling them to see where they were. When i got a hold of my aunt she was two streets away from my house. She asked my dad to go get them because there were no houses with a basement on that street. They had to run to my house after the tornado hit. My aunt and two cousins were crying when they got to my house. I had to call almost all of my aunts and uncles that live in the plains to see if they were alright. My cousin's husband kept laughing when i called to make sure they were alright. I was getting frustrated with him because it was not the time to laugh if you are the one that had the tornado around where you live. After the tornado hit my brother, dad and a guy that works for him started to saw the trees that were in the road. They were cutting them with a hand saw. The next day i had to get to class, but i helped clean up the outside of my house. It took us Friday, Saturday and Sunday just to fix the repairs and to clean up the outside of our house.
ReplyDeleteI was at Buffalo Wild Wings with 3 girls from Boyd their asshole friend named Nate. It was the first time I had ever met him and he was very rude and snobby. I was about halfway done polishing off the 18 wings I ordered and Courtney began receiving texts from her friend Bri that people weren't allowed out of their dorms because of the tornado warning. Then we began hearing sirens and lights started flickering inside the restaurant, even though it didn't appear that bad outside. Suzy started to panic because she's a real fussy type of girl that you wouldn't want to be stuck in an elevator with. She started to cry a little too and we all laughed at her and then she started laughing and she felt a little better. We finished our food and all of us walked back to Boyd, except for Suzy, she ran. Boyd isn't where I live but I left my bag in the girls' room so I had to go back. Upon entering everyone was in the process of going downstairs to the basement so we went down there. I was stuck in Boyd. I would've rather been sucked up by the tornado because it was a solid 100 degrees in the room we were in. Some people were in the garage though, so I went out there and sat in the cooler room while all the "badasses" boasted about being outside and how they weren't scared. They went up and over the top to prove their point, some even what I believe was lying about false tornado encounters. No one was really worried and everyone felt safe. The RA's did a good job of keeping things in order. At about 7:50 I said screw this and went up stairs to their room with them, where we found out Suzy had been the whole time hiding in bed. No one had a clue she was there. I then left about twenty minutes later after getting in an argument with one of the girls, and I had my last straw with Nate so I had to get out of there. By the time I left it was completely safe and the weather was practically passed.
ReplyDeleteWhen this was happening i was in my dorm getting ready to go out. I remember it started to rain really bad and i got really mad because i did not want to have to walk in the rain. Me and my roommates just stayed in the dorm while everyone else went down to the basement. I remember feeling like it was not a big deal at all. I've never been anywhere close to a tornado before so it really didn't hit me that this was a serious situation. Me and my friend just opened up our window and watched the clouds because we thought they looked really cool. i was drinking a raspberry arizona ice tea at the time. My older sister lauren could not get ahold of me and she was very worried and when i saw her she started to cry and that really annoyed me.
ReplyDeleteWhen the tornado was sighted I was in my room on my computer doing homework. I heard the sirens go off and i wasn't sure what was going on at first until i heard a man saying "A tornado warning has been put into affect, find shelter immediately." I am in a triple and one of my roommates was not home but at class so me and my other roommate went downstairs like they told us too. At first they had us in the basement (parking garage level) but there were too many windows in the room so they moved us to the first floor where we ran into our other roommate who was finally let out of class. Then we realized that we left out window open and had to go back into our room to shut it so none of our things would get ruined. I grabbed my laptop and a drink and went back downstairs. The whole time me and my roommates were on Facebook, listening to Kid Cudi, and watching funny You Tube videos. We kept getting frustrated because they kept moving the warning farther and farther back so it was taking so much longer then we were hoping. We were planning on going to Zumba and The Ridges that day so it was really disappointing that the weather wasn't cooperating.
ReplyDeleteWhile all of this started to go down, I was playing red dead redemption with my roommates. Luck has it, my dorm is in the Convocation center. Not expecting a storm that day, the tornado sirens surprised us at first. When we looked out the window, however, the sky was still bright blue. No one payed any attention to them for the first half-hour. Only when our R.A. knocked on our door and said, "a tornado is coming," did we realize it was legit. Every girl in the mod next to ours flipped. Kneeling in the hall/bathroom, hands over head. We made the intelligent decision to go outside and watch. Sadly when we reached outside, the funnel cloud had already passed. A second group of convo residents were already outside when we got there. Their analysis of the storm; ridiculous status.
ReplyDeleteOver the next 45 minutes we stood, talked, and watched the monsoon that seemingly followed the tornado. When all was said and done, we agreed it was pretty tight, went back inside, and continued online team death match.
The recent tornado experience in Athens was by far one of the most interesting things that has happened since I moved to Athens. When the sirens started going off, I was in my dorm room about half asleep watching TV and was not sure really what was going on. I kept hearing the sirens and decided to get up and see what was going on. When I opened the door, I saw all the other residents on my floor hanging out the front door watching, so like any other normal person, I joined. The first thing I noticed when I got outside was that it was much cooler and that it was getting pretty dark out. I saw my hall mates outside analyzing the clouds and holding a thumps up because they were all meteorology majors. I mostly remember seeing how everything started to get bright and before I knew it, the rain started to come down upon us and running to seek shelter in a friends room and listening to everyone freak out about the rain and possible tornado. Before I knew it, I was sitting in a hallway that was way too hot for over an hour to find out that the tornado moved away and I lost half my night to a tornado a few miles away.
ReplyDeleteI came home after teaching class--a task that usually leaves me feeling pretty drained. On this day, though, I was feeling pretty energetic so I toyed with the idea of going for a run.
ReplyDeleteI really hate running, and working my way to the actual run takes me a while. I think for a while about what music I'll listen to--Martin Sexton? Rusted Root? Johnathon Edwards? Dave? No... hmm... shuffle it, for sure. Then I do something totally counter-productive like making a to-do list. Can I talk myself out of it? See how much work I have...
Finally, I convinced myself. (I'll have to finish this later!)
When this happened I was in my dorm in Ryors on West Green where apparently this happened right around there. There was a huge rain storm right before the tornado, and when it ended the tornado sirens started going off all around campus. They were really loud so the first time I heard them I didn't really know what was going on. They sounded similar to ambulance truck sirens. At the time I was watching something on my Tv in my room, and I looked outside to see the sky was really dark but didn't make any of it. They made use evacuate to the basement of our building for about thirty minutes. Since it was just said to be a tornado warning I didn't really know why we had to go in the basement. After looking at the videos I do realize how dangerous and harmful it could have been and I'm glad we were evacuated into the basement. The tornado hit closest to where my hall was near, which made it a little more scary. After we were released from the basement people started going out which I didn't think was a great idea. At home in Maryland, we never have experienced anything like this so I am not really used to something like that. Except for this summer in August, we experienced an earthquake in the early hours of the morning. An earthquake in Maryland has never been experienced since I have been born. I woke up to a rumbling and I thought I was dreaming or just imagining something so I went back to sleep. Then later on I woke up in the morning and saw it all over the news.
ReplyDeleteWhen the sirens were going off me and my friends didn't hear them because we were bumping music in my friends common area. After about 15 minutes of them going off Quintin's RA came up and was sweating and say you guys have to go downstairs. We turned down the music and started to hear the warnings and the guy talking. We all hurried down the stairs and into the basement. In the basement there were about 50 of us in a room that could only hold 20, it felt like. After we all settled into the basement we were all fairly quiet other than the random non-sense of talking. After about a half hour we all sat down and felt a little more comfortable. We were playing cards, listening to music, and a couple of kids were dancing, it was quite amusing. Right next to me was a heavy set kid that smelled pretty raunchy and it was pretty disgusting to sit next to him.
ReplyDeleteThe thoughts that were going through my head were basically i hope we get out of this okay and i hope no one loses any loved ones. I figured since we were in such a hilly place even if the tornado did touch down it would not last long at OU. I was just worried about what my parents were thinking when all this was going on and hoping that no one living outside of the school was harmed. Also, for me this was kind of a bonding moment for me and everyone that lived in Atkinson Hall. I got to meet a lot of cool people, being crammed into a basement for about an hour and a half this is bound to happen. About half way through this time my friend, Chelsea, sent me a picture of a funnel cloud forming on north green. I proceeded to show everyone around me. This got a everyone a little worried, but for the most part my friends and I were pretty calm about the whole situation, other than the heavy set kid next to me smelling bad.
My husband and I had a date night planned. We had heard there was a tornado watch but we didn't think much about it since we have had numerous ones in Athens County since we have lived here. Those that know me well, know my history with date nights. Let's just say that my husband and I are meant to be married but are not meant to date! Every date we have planned for the last year has started with a child throwing up on us or in this case... a natural disaster.
ReplyDeleteWe had just pulled into the mall when I noticed the the swirling of the dark thick clouds above. We ran into one of the stores to pick up something. When we came out to our car I will never forget the dark sky, the almost "calm" that you could hear, and the warm smell of something I have never experienced. I don't even know how to describe it. We could hear the tornado sirens from campus clear down on East State Street. Next came the pelting rain and wind that was unforgiving. We had parked our CRV right next to the building under the carport by the Dialysis center. Even though we were right against the building and shielded from some of the wind our vehicle rocked back and forth relentlessly.
All I could think about was my children and how we had left them on top of the hill that we lived on with a babysitter and how were they managing. I was able to reach the baby sitter by phone but I didn't want her to panic. I just asked her how everything was there and explained to her that if things looked like they were getting bad to please take the girls to the basement. I never mentioned the tornado to her. I tried texting and calling about every 5 minutes while we were waiting out the storm. Sometimes I could get through to her others, I could not due to the overwhelming volume of phone calls in the area.
The one feeling I think most people felt that evening was fear. For me, it was guilt. How could I have left my kids when I was aware of a tornado watch? What if something would have happened to them and I wasn't there to protect them? The tornado had hit less than 2 miles from our house and even though we are high on a hill, tornados are still a threat. It was right around 60 years ago that a tornado had come through and leveled some barns that were located right on the property where our house currently sits.
The staleness in the air, the overwhelming sent of pine trees are two things that I will never forget about that night and the guilt is something that I will never let happen again. I will be there holding my babies the next time there is a watch or a warning. Thank God that only one person died from storms!
My night of the funnel clouds in Athens all began with a phone call from my mom at about 6:20 pm. I had been taking a nap when my phone started going off. My mother said that we had a tornado warning and that we were gonna be hit with a strong storm; I just laughed. Outside through my window I could only see sunlight and no clouds in the sky. I however told her I would keep an eye on the weather channel. As I began to slowly drift back to sleep I could barely hear the sound of a siren over the faint volume of the television. I got out of bed to head closer to the window to hear. I heard a mans voice over the siren, barely, stating a tornado warning. I went out into my hall where girls from the room next to mine were also at. It was still sunny with a few clouds on the horizon but we figured we should go to the lobby to check just in case. We walked down four flights of stairs to the lobby where a few people including the RA's were standing. They said that there was a warning and that meant the whole dorm had to be evacuated to the first floor lobby. We ran upstairs to grab some belongings. Mine including my laptop, charger, cell phone, and ipod. Then it was time for the camp out. Our small lobby was now crammed with residents from the dorm where we sat around waiting to hear more news. Eventually the sky filled up with dark clouds. Being the curious teenagers we are, we all ran outside the front doors to take a better look. I had never experienced a tornado before, but watching those funnel clouds was one of the coolest experiences. Apart from the frantic phone calls from my mother all night, I had a great time hanging with the people from my dorm, and watching the funnel clouds churn in the sky.
ReplyDeleteWhen the tornado hit Athens, I was getting ready to go to a meeting. I was packing up my bag and talking to my friend on the phone and completely ignored the sirens. somehow I tuned them out and didn't think anything of them. I just wanted to get to my meeting before it started down pouring. As I was walking out of my room, I realized a lot of the girls in my hall were in the hall way and some of them looked pretty frantic. I was still on the phone when I heard one of the girls mention a tornado. As soon I heard that, it suddenly hit me that those sirens in the background were actually for a tornado warning, I immediately hung up on my friend and asked the girls what was going on. Thats when they told me that there had been tornado sitings and we were in a tornado warning. I felt so stupid!
ReplyDeleteSo the girls and I went to our RA's room and knocked on her door. Turns out she was sleeping and did't hear any of the sirens either. She hadn't heard anything from our RC so she just told us not to go outside. So I went back in my room and called my friend back. about 2 minutes later, my RA was knocking on all the resident's doors telling us that we needed to be in the hallway. I was smart and brought my laptop and a pillow.
About 5 minutes after that, our RA was told that we all needed to go to the first floor and sit in the hallway.I brought my computer and pillow so I would stay distracted. When we got to the first floor, the hallway was already packed and we were forced to sit in the stairwell. I tried to lighten the mood by opening Facebook and adding everyone around me but I could tell people were getting annoyed. I stayed busy on my computer though and that distracted me.
Some girls were crying and talking to their parents, while other residents were pressing their faces up against the windows. None of us really knew how serious this tornado was until the day after and now thinking back on it, I wish people would have taken it more seriously. Half way through the warning, I noticed people were going upstairs but I stayed down the whole time. As the hall cleared out, I went into the hallway. people were playing games like corn hole in the halls. eventually the warning was lifted and I was able to go back upstairs. I never realized how how much danger we really were in until the day after, and to think, I almost walked outside in it.
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