Thomasville, GA Tornado Feb 19, 2009 Destruction

I am so sorry to everyone for falling very behind on my blogging. My life has just taken over and so my blogging has taken a back burner to it all. I am so sorry, I hope you all will forgive me! I am so unbelievably busy, it's crazy. Well, and I have also fallen to the facebook addiction! It is a crazy time sucker, and I don't spend a lot of time there, but I have found many friends from high school, and so I chat with some, etc.

Here is my first update, and I will try to get all my stuff on here that needs to be. Christmas, New Years, birthdays, my temple trip-and my second one that will be in a few weeks.
Love to all,
Amy and the boys :)

This morning was a very scary experience for us here in Thomasville. We were all sleeping soundly in our beds, and I was awakened by Chandler yelling at me from across the house, "There's a tornado warning for Thomasville!!!" So I jumped out of bed, and ran to his room. Then I went and turned on the tv, but of course due to the heavy rain the satellite was not coming very good. Then I turned on the regular radio, because for some reason my weather radio has disappeared. Anyway, finally WCTV came in long enough for me to see that yes there was a tornado warning for us, and even down to our street. And that had me concerned because we live in a mobile home and from my experiences living in Oklahoma, in my opinion tornadoes aim for mobile homes. So I got down on my knees with Chandler and we prayed for safety from the storm and that our home would not have any damage from this. After we prayed I told Chandler about a part in my patriarchal blessing. First I told him that this is a very important blessing that you receive when you are 16, and will help you in your life. Then I told him that in mine it says that I will live long enough to see my children grow into adults. And I told him that I have total Faith in the Lord that it isn't our time to go yet, and that the Lord will protect us from this storm. I knew we would be ok, but it was hard to help Chandler understand, he's only 10. He really wanted us to go somewhere other than here. He wanted us to go to his school, or into the shop or the van whatever. I tried to explain to him that it was 2 am in the morning and that no one would be at his school. That we could go into my closet, the most inner room of our house if we needed too. And I watched and waited for almost 3 hours until the worst was over. I finally got Chandler to go back and lay down, since he had to get up for school at 6. I went back to bed at 3:15 am, and had to get up with them at 6 am. So my day has been a long one.When I got up this morning, I looked outside and the stars were out and there was not a cloud in the sky. It didn't look like the wrath of Mother Nature had been here only a few hours prior to that. After the boys got on the bus I turned on the same channel WCTV and they were showing that there were 4 confirmed tornadoes last night and that at least 1 came through Thomasville. Then I turned on the weather.com website and they had a broadcast live from Thomasville on their site. The tornado had ripped through a mobile home park on the other side of town, and destroyed 50 homes. So far I have only heard of two fatalities, one was an older man who had a heart attack, not sure about the other.
After all the kids were picked up I took the boys around to see some of the destruction from this tornado, an F2 with winds of 125 miles per hour as per the National Weather Service. Chandler likes to watch the Storm Chaser shows and so he wants to see the actual tornado but since it was at like 1:15 am it was pitch black outside, and we weren't close enough to see it. Anyway, there was a ton of traffic. Everyone was out to see what was going on. There were even police guiding the traffic because it was so heavy. Plus there were so many utility trucks that everything was bottle necked. We drove around for a bit, then got out of the van at my friend Melanie's house. It was amazing how much destruction there was. And it was interesting about Melanie's house, there were trees down all over but none on the house. Except the one that was in the front, but it didn't do much damage. It looked like someone had thrashed around the woods behind their house, but left the house alone. And some of the houses were not touched, when the next door house was torn apart. Crazy, weird!

Hayden playing on a swing set, that was overturned by the tornado. Among all the destruction, he still wanted to play.

The sun setting over all the fallen trees. What an eerie site.

A tree laying on this house.


Another sunset shot of the mangled trees.


Melanie's back yard where the trees fell on the fence.


Some insulation from the piece of the room that was in her yard.

These are two of my biggest helpers. We were visiting my friend Melanie, and they were picking up extra branches that they could find and putting them on the piles that were in each yard. It was so cute. They said they want to do service too. It made me feel good, I am instilling in them great qualities to be selfless and do service for others.

The second house has a tree through the back of it, but I couldn't get a very clear shot of it, through all the debris.

This is into a neighbors yard, some of the trees are just tangled and falling over, if not snapped at the middle.

See all the trees snapped off right at the middle, it was amazing to see. Some at the roots others in the middle.

A piece of some one's siding hung in a tree, way up in the top of one of the pine trees. Hmmm, how is that going to come down?

This is a tree right in the middle of Melanie's neighbor's yard. She had one like this in her yard but it was on top of their house. They had cut it down before we got there. And also she had 1/4 of a roof from 4 doors down in her front yard too.

A bunch of trees down in front of the Brookwood school.

Here's another tree broke off right in the middle.

More trees, just mangled and broken. Excuse the mirror, I was driving and trying to lean over Owen and take these pictures, so they are not perfect.

Trees all over this house. It was so devastating to see. Power lines and phone lines down all over too.

This is the front of that house, so many trees on it, that is awful. And surprisingly no one was injured.

Totally uprooted tree in that front yard.

Seeing this damage brought back many vivid memories of living in Oklahoma. I can remember when the tornado came through Catoosa, my junior year of high school. It actually happened on Prom night. We (the students and their dates) usually go to Tulsa (30 minutes away, bigger city more dining options) for dinner, then come back to Claremore for Prom, but this time I decided to stay in Claremore, which I didn't know why at the time, but now do know I was being prompted by the Spirit. I went with a friend of mine I worked with. Well, a little while after we got there, we noticed that there were not very many people there, and then little by little people started showing up in jeans and t-shirts. So they all explained that there was a tornado and that most of them were caught in it because it came straight down the highway as they were returning from dinner. Some of the stories were very scary, and something I am glad I didn't experience. There was a lot of destruction from this tornado. I can't remember how big it was, but it did a lot of damage. I looked online and it said it was an F4 (the biggest is an F5) & it ran for 6 miles, and had a swath of 250 yards.

I just want to publicly thank my Heavenly Father for keeping my boys and me safe during this storm that we had. We have many blessings to be thankful for.