We survived the tornado.........

[66KingFisher]

Hey guys, this is my first chance to get online and let ya'll know that we survived the tornado that rolled thru our scenic little town this past thursday nite.....I also want to tell you how nice a feeling it was to have someone from this forum call my home and check on us over the weekend.....Thats special to me because i'm a new member here at BassFishin.com and I don't know a soul here on a personal level....Well as of now I think I know at least one persons soul a bit better....Zooker...buddy....I was deeply touched that you called....I hadn't a clue who you were at first, till you mentioned this site, but I gotta tell ya bud, that really,really ment alot to me..."thank you sir"...that was in my opinion, above and beyond the call of duty for any forum member.....I'll never forget that.....I gotta steak and a cold one with your name on it buddy if you ever get down my way, or I yours.....Bama, I see that you tried callin too buddy.....i'm sure I could spring for a second hunk of dead cow and something to wet yer whistle too....I'm touched guys....I truely am....says alot about your character and the kind of folks we got here.....I dunno what else to say but thank you.....I hope we can all meet and wet a hook someday....and Bama, you were right bud...the chainsaws have been runnin none stop round here.

As for the experience, all I can say is "Wow"....I lived my whole life in the middle of tornado alley,Tulsa Oklahoma. but I had to move to Mena Arkansas to finally get slammed head on for the first time....hehehe...what a deal, but I hope its the last time too.
We were eating dinner when the warning sirens sounded the first time, so I told the wife to take the grandbaby and get into the closet in our bedroom thats on the north side of our house while I fired up the police scanner to see what kinda cross talk I could pick up...our daughter was across town at work at the time....After hearing the cops talk for a few minutes I did what any typical male would do....since it sounded like it was headed my way I went outside to look around and see whats what of course...Duh....When I stepped out from under the back porch all I could see was a wall of black sky to my south, but as I stood there and listened I could hear a train....it took me several seconds to determine it wasn't a real train since tracks are close by and we hear them often....but something about this train was different....the louder it got the more it sounded less like a train and more like a blast furnace.....and huge blast furnace that was makin a heck of roar.....It was about this time that I decided this must be the real deal and I turned and headed the 15ft across the porch towards the back door, and before I got there the wind hit so bad I almost couldn't pull the stormdoor open...and thats sayin alot cause i'm not really a little guy....after a second big yank, I was in....slammed the main door behind me as I took off runnin thru the house yellin "its here, its here"....by the time I reached the closet and started to pull the door close behind me it hit.....windows exploded like a bomb went off next door and the roar was almost deafening.....but what amazed me the most was the powerfull instant vacuum within the room....the closet door doesn't have a latch or knob from the inside so I was just holding it by hand, and it was all I could do to keep it from being ripped from my fingers.....for a split second that scene from the movie "Twister" where the father is holding the cellar door closed and the tornado takes the door along with him up into the sky came to mind....but thankfully that wasn't the case here and in about 30 seconds it was all over.

After checking on neighbors to make sure nobody was hurt we all just seemed to stand around in the middle of the street like zombies as we look at the sight before our eyes...It was a full moon nite and everything had an eerie orange glow to it till the moon got high enough in the sky that it began to look white again....I guess that was from dust in the air or something....I dunno but it was creepy....many things were not recongnizable and you strained to see what it was....Our poor daughter only works about 5 minutes from home.....they didn't get hit directly but she knew it was headed into our neighborhood so she's freakin out.....she spent the next hour and half tryin to get home and when could couldn't get by car she just left it and started walking....most of the time she didn't know where she was because everything looked different....even road signs were missing.....fortunately she made it home safely and found her baby and her parents safe and sound so all ended well....but boy what a stressfull nite.....Our oldest daughter lives in Tampa and just jumped in her truck and headed this way when she didn't hear from us......we finally got a text message to her, but she went ahead and drove on up to help with the clean up....and just to see our faces i'm sure.

It wasn't until the sun came up the next morning that we all got our first look at the damages and we were shocked.....This area of town got hit hard....really hard, but we got off easy compared to most of the other folks.....We don't own this place, but we like it enough that we have rented this same house for 9yrs now and until now had no reason to consider moving because the area was just so beautiful....Its like an 80yr old house and in typical tornado fasion our house really wasn't hurt too bad while my neighbors homes lay in ruins....we lost shingles and got a few holes in the roof from where a huge old pecan tree was pushed over into it....it was growing just a few feet from the house so it just kinda leaned over onto the second story rooftop and stopped at about a 30 degree angle or so....I sure hated to loose that beautiful old tree,it provided shade for the whole house most of the day....naturally we lost most of the windows on the south and east side of the house, but in some cases the storm window broke but the house window did not....Ripped the roof from over the back porch and ripped the electric meter off the front of the house.....My airbrushing studio took a beating, but actually faired pretty good concidering its just a glorified shed with a tin roof...it only lost half the roof....ripped the back door in half and stuck several tree limbs thru the walls...the rest is water damage and just a messed up interior from blowing shingles/insulation and stuff......The worst part of it all for us was our carport/garage was destroyed...I mean like its just gone....both vehicles parked inside were still sitting there on the concrete slab...unmoved....naturally they got beat up somewhat by flyin lumber...busted front and rear glass on one truck but none on the other....Tore the front end off my newly acquired ridin lawn mower which kinda bums me out, but she'll still run.....Lost my tackle box and my BPS spincast combo that had been given me fits with line twist....both were under the carport....I tried to do a bit of searching but I quickly realized its like lookin for a needle in a haystack....theres so much debris piled everywhere its crazy....I suppose in exchange, I did find a nice lifejacket in my yard and my neighbor even had someones canoe land in front yard.....not quite a far trade though....lol....the canoe was just about folded in half so its no good anyway....saw someones bass boat in a tree standin straight up with its bow pointed at the sky....I don't mind loosing the rod-n-reel, cause it wasn't all that expensive anyway....but I do hate loosin the tackle....I didn't have alot cause I only started collecting stuff since last summer, but it was a nice little collection for just spendin $10 here and there at Wallyworld...worst of it is, the new stuff i'd purchased from my christmas trip to bps...got several packs of Ragetail plastics I was sure lookin forward to using...Oh well,whatcha gonna do...least i've got a couple of old fishin poles I can use as backups fer now and I'll just start collecting new stuff as I can.....Lord knows i'd sure like to go fishin right now.....I heard the tornado came across the little lake I fish, so i'm wondering if there are any new blowdowns to pitch a jig at?

Needless to say 2009 hasn't started out to be such a great year for us......i've had more heart problems this year....fuel pump went out in my truck right after that....My daughter had a blowout recently bout wrecked her car and we had to go fetch them back home and repair the car....just last week the clothes dryer died....now a tornado....Whats next?...Lightning?....Locus?...Meteor shower?...Alien invasion?
Sad thing is, theres a whole lot of folks in town that are alot worse off then us....you can see pics and video at youtube, just do a search for mena tornado, and you'll find several.....lots of folks don't have a clue whats fixin to happen to them......keep them in your prayers.....On a positive note, the outpouring of help from the locals and the local churches and even these disaster relief teams that rolled in has been incredable to say the least....i'm proud to be a part of small town america.

I haven't seen any of the news reports so I haven't a clue what kind of pictures or video ya'll might have seen, but i'll attach a couple of pics I took the morning after....I'll start with a picture of what our yard looked like this past fall.

Sorry for the long post....and thank all of you for caring enough to check on us.....God bless you guys...yer good people.
Michael