After days of warnings, tornadoes hit our area today. Some areas near me were heavily damaged. Luckily, our immediate area was spared. Shifting 25 miles could have changed the story entirely.
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| the junior/senior high school |
Tonight, I'm feeling so fortunate, knowing that I don't have to spend the time without power, or cleaning up trees, or worse, looking for a place to stay. There are people doing this tonight, and people that are mourning the loss of loved ones and wish they'd "only" lost everything they owned. As they dig people out and go through more areas, the death toll keeps rising.
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| a neighborhood |
God was with us today as we watched the radar, ready to head to the basement. But God was also with those that had tornadoes in their midst. He didn't spare some people but strike others. Terrible things happen sometimes, and God is with us then, too. My prayers are with those affected and I wish I could ease their pain.
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| Rainbow after the storms ended. |
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and
saves those who are crushed in spirit
Psalm 34:18
You are all in our prayers.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Kath.
DeletePrayers with those that are suffering. Thanks for your perspective. I heard someone on a radio talk show saying "God sent these tornadoes to punish people" but I thought, how? the whole town was evil? even the kids that were killed? I don't think so. So right after that I read your blog post and it reminded what I already knew. My sister lives just north of New Albany. Their house was heavily damaged but they weren't home so didn't get hurt. She's feeling lucky because she says the back of the house where they usually go during storms was the part torn off. They can rebuild the house, but not lives.
ReplyDeleteYou are so right. "They can rebuild the house but not lives."
DeleteThere are 19 people known to have died in Kentucky due to tornadoes Friday, though the number will increase. There are still missing people as well as some hurt very badly that might not make it. I forgot how many from southern Indiana (we're just a few miles from the Indiana border) Louisville was lucky as they hit all around us, all within 20-25 miles. They were F2, F3, and F4 tornadoes. The place where Ben helped out (see my fb wall for photos) was Henryville, where they had an F4 level tornado. This means the winds were between 160-200 miles per hour. There were also tornadoes in our area Wed.
ReplyDeleteThere are tragic stories of total loss and devastating tales of deaths. There are also many more stories of people trying desperately to help any way they can. There are stories of miraculous events that could have killed people, but didn't. The school dismissed students 20 minutes before it hit and blew the school apart. If they'd kept them there, hundreds would have been hurt or killed. The buses in the pictures that were rammed into a house and the one on it's side had students in them minutes earlier, but were empty when it meant the most.
Most of the damage was in small towns so the impact was great in terms of affecting such a huge percentage of people. There's a good chance that most people were either affected themselves or knew people that were. If the tornado paths that went on either side of Louisville had shifted 25 miles, the death toll would have been in the hundreds just because of population density.
So sad. And I worry as we've already had several tornado outbreaks this year when the "season" is usually around April. The unseasonably warm weather we've had this winter makes conditions more favorable for severe storms which can form tornadoes.