Post by Joe on Oct 9, 2011 22:46:34 GMT -5
I flew the Cessna 172 down there and picked up one of my best friends, a local dentist I've known since kindergarten. He lost both his house and his office in the tornado.
This is his temporary office on Range Line Road. It's the dark gray square with the bright white gravel parking lot above and to the left. This is actually a pretty clever set up by his insurance carrier, four pre-dentistrified prefab'ed trailors bolted together and sealed.
This is the swath. Almost all of the debri has been carted off by now. The big "complex" above the railroad tracks is the local high school, which was torn to shreds. They've split the high school in two for now-- frosh and sophs at the old high school across town; juniors and seniors are going to school at the mall, where an abandoned dept store was converted into a school.
The western third of the swath. The tornado touched down just to the west of town, intensifying from F1 to F5 in only about a mile. This was a big part of why it was so dangerous. Anyone watching the Weather Channel that afternoon may recall St. John's Hospital, the cluster of buildings three blocks to the right of that big bend in the road. My dentist friend lived about half a mile west of there. Two other friends of mine who lived in that part of town also lost their houses. One of them lived in a little sh*t-hole and it's a miracle he's alive.
A couple things have stuck me the last couple times I've been down there. One is how far you can see now that all the debri is gone. It's weird. I grew up in this town, and have had this mental map in my head my whole life. Now that all the obstructions and reference points are gone in that part of town, it's apparent that my mental map was wrong, that things are a lot closer than I'd always thought they were. You can see St. John's hospital halfway across town now and I can't get over how HUGE it seems from so far off.
The other thing was driving right down the heart of the swath at night. None of the lights are there anymore. You forget how lit up even an average sized town is at night, what with streetlights, windows, signs, headlights, etc. It is spooky and totally weird. The shorn trees make it seem like a graveyard.
This is his temporary office on Range Line Road. It's the dark gray square with the bright white gravel parking lot above and to the left. This is actually a pretty clever set up by his insurance carrier, four pre-dentistrified prefab'ed trailors bolted together and sealed.
This is the swath. Almost all of the debri has been carted off by now. The big "complex" above the railroad tracks is the local high school, which was torn to shreds. They've split the high school in two for now-- frosh and sophs at the old high school across town; juniors and seniors are going to school at the mall, where an abandoned dept store was converted into a school.
The western third of the swath. The tornado touched down just to the west of town, intensifying from F1 to F5 in only about a mile. This was a big part of why it was so dangerous. Anyone watching the Weather Channel that afternoon may recall St. John's Hospital, the cluster of buildings three blocks to the right of that big bend in the road. My dentist friend lived about half a mile west of there. Two other friends of mine who lived in that part of town also lost their houses. One of them lived in a little sh*t-hole and it's a miracle he's alive.
A couple things have stuck me the last couple times I've been down there. One is how far you can see now that all the debri is gone. It's weird. I grew up in this town, and have had this mental map in my head my whole life. Now that all the obstructions and reference points are gone in that part of town, it's apparent that my mental map was wrong, that things are a lot closer than I'd always thought they were. You can see St. John's hospital halfway across town now and I can't get over how HUGE it seems from so far off.
The other thing was driving right down the heart of the swath at night. None of the lights are there anymore. You forget how lit up even an average sized town is at night, what with streetlights, windows, signs, headlights, etc. It is spooky and totally weird. The shorn trees make it seem like a graveyard.