Minneapolis Tornado

As many of you know, Minneapolis experienced an F1 or F2 tornado on Sunday May 22, 2011. It happened in the afternoon while most of my family was at church. It was terrifying to hear that a tornado hit the area of our home and at first not know if we even had a home to go to. Austin was home sick at the time so we did receive word that the home looked okay but there were 3 large trees blocking the street just a few houses down from ours and we had no electricity. Our home is without damage. We were without electricity until Tuesday night. On Tuesday night May 24th we lost phone and internet service. They were finally restored the afternoon of June 2nd.

On Sunday, we had taken an investigator to church with us and it took probably an hour or more just to get him home as his home was in the "damage zone". Most of the streets in his area were blocked by large trees or downed power lines. We finally got him home and his home only sustained a small amount of damage with 2 window broken out and a tree uprooted. His older teenage kids were okay. It was hard to see all the home damages, businesses destroyed and trees down. Made me really nervous to see how our immediate neighborhood looked. It was not easy getting home either. The good thing was we needed to eat all the ice cream we had so it wouldn't go bad (a great lesson I learned from my smart mother!) That was yummy!

On Monday I kept the kids home from school since the roads were nearly impassable in our neighborhood. Sierra and I walked around the neighborhood, going only a few blocks and we took lots of pictures. Some, like this one, were kind of funny (in a sad way). It was found about 2-3 blocks from the Beauty Salon where it use to be outside. Instead it was blocks away in a church yard.

Yes, the tornado could be classified as a "Super Blow-Out"!

I can't believe how many trees in our neighborhood were completely uprooted. Beautiful trees that were probably 60-100 years old are now just piles of lumber. Lots of sidewalks were displaced by the huge tree roots too.

Tree roots flipped the sidewalk over.

 

The sidewalk piece just flipped over!

From reports I heard today, Minneapolis has removed 4,424 dump truck loads of tree debris.  And there is still alot left to remove. There are still homes without power or even water.  Red Cross drives the streets every day delivering free bagged meals for families. I am really impressed with their services and friendliness! Apparently they have delivered over 60,000 meals and snacks so far. Lots of churches have free meals they have done.  


Keep everyone in Minneapolis in your prayers.  There is still much to be done. Hopefully when the work is done, the area will be greatly improved and the strength and friendship the community has developed will continue.