Left the neighborhood today to realize that we were directly in the path. A mile and a half down the street is all sunshine and rainbows. No debris, no damage, no trees down, nothing. There is a distinct line between what was affected and what wasn't, like driving into the rain.
I saw the worst of the damage on my way home, so when I got home, I thought we were in the clear. No, my elderly neighbor had a tree come through his bedroom. Another neighbor pulled the pizza delivery guy in and into the basement as a tree came through their house. Our little branch hanging down is actually a 35x35 foot branch of a 150 foot tree. It's just dangling off the tree about 30 feet from our house and the bedroom of our neighbor's newborn baby. If it falls, it will probably take out more of the fence, the pool, possibly our deck/part of our houses, and would easily kill a person or our dogs. Tried to get it down for hours this weekend and it's just too far up. The County had everyone pull their trees to the curb to be picked up, so you can barely drive down the street. Shingles and siding and shit all over. There is just destruction everywhere we look.
On one hand I feel lucky because we aren't hurt. But this is the exact same path a storm-turned-tornado took when our airport was hit a couple of years ago. I've lived here my whole life and remember one really bad storm with tornado potential as a kid, but now it's every year or so. This was an EF3 tornado with a 22 mile path yet we had zero warning sirens until after it was here. People were running into their basements before sirens even went off while entire floors of their homes were taken out. It's very unsettling.
I guess it doesn't help that the baby was really sick before the storm, and since we had no power after the storm, she had to go to my parents' house 30 miles away. After she got there, she developed a horrible rash. Well wtf can I do? I'm in a disaster area far from her. I have no way to charge my phone and our cell service is spotty, so I'm trying to tell my mom who to call and try to figure out if she should go to the ER. I haven't seen her in 2 days and I have to try to go back to work tomorrow. We still have so much shit to clean up around here, and we really can't do much. The whole thing has been very overwhelming. I've never lived somewhere where Red Cross is driving through, and assholes from out of state are driving through trying to rip people off for clean-up assistance.
Plus all my friends are inconsiderate assholes, as usual. My husband's friends are generally good people, and some actually came over to help clean up, but I probably could've gotten sucked away and my friends wouldn't notice. Who has two thumbs and was her own DD for her 21st birthday? This girl...
