You ready?
BTW-- the thread seems alarmist. I know. But if I simply asked if you had prepared a tornado kit & set up a place that was sheltered, you wouldn’t even open the thread, now would you?
I remember the 1998 ones very well - I worked in Madison at the time, along Gallatin Road, and I lived about a mile from the Hermitage.
I’m over in Knoxville now, and I’m in a very sturdily constructed building (brick and masonry), but I still pay attention to the weather. I don’t want to be caught in my car if something happens.
I remember them well - and I was in Atlanta. I worked for a major bank and the downtown twister hit our Nashville operations center. The Nashville center processed the checks, etc. for all of NC and some of SC. We in Atlanta got to “go live” with our disaster recovery plan for the first time. We set up our “hot site”, bussed and flew people in from all over the country and managed to process all the Nashville work on time. Flawlessly. Seamlessly. Our customers were impacted exactly zero. We were heroes! I got a “Tornado Teamwork” t-shirt! A few years later I was downsized! No t-shirt for that. Oh, well. The fickle winds of a tornado and corporate change have much in common.
Bosda Do you remember these? I was on the street near the courthouse square when these hit. I made it to my car and made it home, thankfully. some friends of mine lost their homes in this tornado.
I have a tornado kit at home with water, food, flashlight, NOAA radio, candles etc. I guess I’m as ready as one can be.
Oh yes.
But the 98 storms caught me outdoors, between Smyrna & Murfreesboro, in that 10 mile long stretch of nothing but trees, fields, & tumbledown barns. All the ditches filled with water, & no place to hide.
One passed within less than a mile of me. I just floored it in my car. There was no place to take shelter, that’s all.
Heh, I live in a trailer park, and I say, “Bring it on!”
The ones I remember most vividly were ones in the spring of 98. I was working at The Gap warehouse at that time, and we spent, literally hours crammed into one small room of the place, unable to even leave the room to go to the bathroom. As soon as one alert would be over, we’d head back to work, only to be ushered back to the conference room once again as soon as a new alert was declared. Eventually, gallows humor took over, and the folks who managed to sneak a peek out the one tiny window in the room would say things like, “I’m no meterologist, but I think now would be a good time to bend over and kiss our asses goodbye.”
Sigh, tornado alerts beat terrorist alerts any day. (Because in TN, you know that there’s at least the possibility of a tornado striking, whereas we’re at the bottom of the terrorist lists, so why we should feel the need to panic when the government declares a “Condition Orange” is beyond me.)
I was a freshman at APSU when the tornado of 99 hit. It took a beautiful campus and turned it into a complete disaster. It seemed like half the buildings on campus got closed down because the roof was missing.
The UC’s windows got boarded up with plywood. Some of the art students ended up painting silohettes on them.
Downtown Clarksville was a mess too. It was blocked off for weeks. I think they just finally finished all the rebuilding.
