We were just 10 minutes ahead of the storm Friday the 8th of May, listening to the updates on the radio as we heard warnings and testimonies of trees blowing over in the highway we had just passed over. This is how we escaped Southern Illinois and what they called an Inland Hurricane.
We came back Sunday night around midnight, entering into a city without power and unable to recognize familiar landmarks. We strained our eyes to see any kind of wreckage and managed to see a few leaning sign posts, a broken power line here or there. We pulled into our driveway and could see the silhouette of the large tree in the back of the house that had fallen on our half of the duplex. Walking into our house, I grabbed my headlamp and immediately shone it at the ceiling because not five inches in front of my face was a three foot long tree branch that had poked through our ceiling and into our front entry/living room. We cautiously walked through the house alert for anything (especially on the ceiling) that belonged outside the house. It felt like a horror movie with the florescent headlamp in the unfamiliar darkness of a deserted house. When we got to the bedroom, at the back of the house where the tree fell, we turned off the lights and opened the blinds of our sliding glass door. The tree was just overwhelmingly huge!
We were without power until Thursday evening, some people are still without power and it could be another week before they get power. The food in our freezer and refridgerator lasted three days without any help. On Monday we got ice and transported most of our frozen goods into our cooler. We went to some of the friends house on Tuesday night to get a hot shower and non-grilled food. I enjoy grilling, but it sure is nice to have a break! Wednesday night we started cooking up all our meat because it had thawed and needed to either freeze (which I could no longer do) or get cooked up and be able to last longer. We didn’t loose too much food, which is more than we can say for most people and grocery stores down here. Many places were able to function with the help of a generator, which we don’t have. We also got a shower at the Rec Center Wednesday night. Thursday my bank got power (although it had stayed open even without power).
Wednesday night/Thursday morning we had a thunderstorm and it rained. Thursday morning we woke up to a wet bed and a wet front entryway,because the roof was leaking. So finally our landlady sent someone to take the tree off the roof, but not out of the front entry way. Friday night it rained and we didn’t wake up to any wet places, so the holes are fixed. There are at least 5 cars totally destroyed by trees (our neighbor was driving when a tree hit the back of his jeep, he kept driving until he got home, though). Many homes have huge trees that fell into/on them.
We are just happy to cook on the stove, store food in the refrigerator/freezer, wash our clothes, take hot showers… things we take for granted, but definitely miss when we didn’t have it. I feel superficial because I know there are a lot of people in the world that don’t even have running hot water or any kind of electricity, and here we are “toughing it out” for a week and complaining up a storm.
Photos to come.
