too close to home …

Friends and family, I just have to give praise and thanks to God for His protection this past Wednesday! I have been through some pretty severe storms in my 34 years…and 11 months ago I was typing a blog entry about a horrible storm that knocked a tree on our house and took out 2 other trees in our yard.  But nothing has compared to the 5 waves of storms that ripped through our county on April 27th.  It started around 9am. We had a tornado touch down in the Georgetown area (about 10 miles from my house). At that point the EMA put out warnings that we were in for WORSE storms in a few hours and around 11:30am all parents were called to pick their children up from school. I had to work from 7a-7p so I picked the kids up and then Christian came and got them from me around 12:30.  This was the biggest break in between storms that we would have all day.  From 3pm-11:30pm a severe cell of storms would hit about every 2 hours.  Each bringing quarter sized to golf ball sized hail and winds up to 190 mph.  We had a total of 6 tornados in Bradley County (one F2 and one F4) . According to the EMA yesterday “As of today's damage assessments, we are up to more than 260 homes completely destroyed in Bradley County. That means wiped out, down to the slab foundations. And this with many areas still to check.”  Unbelievable!!  That is 260 families that have lost everything – and that is just in my county….this horrible storm made a path of destruction through Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee! In all, 9 people lost their lives in our county that day from 3 months old to age 81. As for our family, obviously we are fine! We didn’t even lose power! We had a few limbs down in the yard, one fell on our trailer and broke the hitch, our satellite was blown off the roof, but NOTHING in  comparison to areas that were hit within 2-3 miles of our house!

tornado above Bowater paper plant (right by Christian’s school)

 

This used to be 6 houses – now there is 1 barely standing

 

cars still parked in basement garage where family was huddling during storm. House was lifted from over them and moved back about 30 feet off it’s foundation! They are alive!!

 

another subdivision leveled

 

house gone and trees broken like match sticks

 

There will be no school all next week as our community pulls together to  clean up and recover what they can. 

We are so thankful!

A Mighty Fortress is our God!!