[AT] Disastrous weather...

Wed Jun 4 22:39:13 PDT 2008

Indiana Robinson wrote:
> As I type this it is about 45 minutes past midnight.
> A couple of hours ago Central Indiana was awash with
> weather alerts and from what I could tell from the TV
> news at one point there may have been as many as 8 or
> more tornadoes active. There were also some severe
> straight line winds. The weather service reported 3500
> lighting strikes in a very short time in just one
> small storm cell north west of here. Our farm was
> spared even though some of the tornado activity
> (moving west to east) was first spotted from a tiny
> village (Prescott IN) less than 2 miles east of us. We
> heard the city's (Shelbyville IN) tornado siren and
> started monitoring the weather. One of our daughters
> lives in a small town (Waldron IN) about 6 miles south
> east of us. The last we heard from her they were
> headed to the basement. The power and phone lines are
> about all down there yet but we know that they are
> looking for shelter for about 11 families tonight due
> to home damage and lots of trees down. There are no
> reported injuries there.
> Now for the one that has me worried...
> We just rented a house in a small village (Moscow IN)
> in the the next county to a family with 5 kids. Our
> property there includes 17 acres that runs across the
> back of the village and on both sides of a very long
> covered bridge often claimed to be Indiana's longest
> covered bridge. Tonight the sheriff's dept. in that
> county tells me that the bridge is totally
> destroyed... Our rental house is only about 200' from
> the bridge. I'm very concerned about that family but
> could find out little. The authorities were doing a
> house to house when I talked to them and while there
> were 5 reported injuries in the community they said
> that only one from the village was sent to the
> hospital and she didn't believe that it was someone
> from our house. We also have very good long time
> friends that live only about 80' from the bridge and
> more that live a few hundred feet further away. The TV
> news folks were standing by and talking with people
> that had serious home damage outside of town but the
> news folks couldn't get into the town yet due to trees
> down and downed wires. About all I can do now is wait
> for daylight and hope that they found shelter if
> needed. I was going over there tomorrow anyway since I
> have been doing some work on the house. The bathroom
> hot water faucet was leaking and it was an older
> odd-ball sink and faucet set. I finally decided to buy
> a new sink top and faucet set that was current and
> just replace the whole thing. I bought them today but
> now I have to wait to see if there is anything left to
> attach it to... About all I could see in the news
> chopper footage was the church, a lot of flashing red
> and blue lights and a big industrial loader (probably
> from the stone quarry at the edge of town) pushing
> downed trees out of the way.
> The frustrating part now is not knowing if I am
> dealing with minor damage or total destruction of the
> house. If it is unlivable I will need to see if there
> is anything I can do to help them find a place to
> live... I know that we can scrape up a batch of
> clothes for the kids if needed and a number of other
> things but we won''t know about needs (or if they have
> any needs at all) until tomorrow morning.
> Most frustrating. ..
> 
> 
> 	You guys in Ohio better "duck and cover". The radar map is a mess...
> 
> 
> 
> 
============ ========= ========= ===

OK, It is now about 24 hours later... The village of
Moscow (Pronounced like it has "coe" on the end not
like "cow" like the Russian city) is still sealed off
by law enforcement and very difficult to get into.
Even some of the residents have had some problems
getting in and out. I determined early Wednesday
morning from the sheriff's department there that our
renters had called in and said that they were OK. I
still didn't know if they (we)had a house left. We
finally tried to get into the village after lunch
(Wed.) and were turned away about 2 miles from town on
the main highway. We then circled around through the
county roads and found another road block on a hill at
the edge of town. We parked in a driveway and I walked
over to the fellow there (a fireman in a sheriff's
vest) and basically talked my way in. I was more than
pleased to see that not only were the house and the
30' x 43' block building (former auto service garage)
still standing but that they were basically unharmed.
One 3' piece of trim was knocked loose on the back
corner of the house roof and it was all covered with
tiny pieces of ground up leaves. Otherwise it looked
just as I had seen it last. The two couples that are
good friends there were also mostly unscathed except
for limbs and the loss of some other properties they
own in town. A run down old house across the street
from our house was sporting a huge horizontal maple
log about 12' below where the roof peak used to be and
it will probably be demolished. The renters (with 5
kids at home) were out cleaning things up. He had
their 3 boys dragging limbs from yards around town to
the many brush piles that were being built for pickup
by the county later. The din of dozens of chainsaws
was constant the whole afternoon. They had huddled in
the basement during the twister and were glad the
basement was there.
The covered bridge (over 300' long) was truly
destroyed but there is already talk of rebuilding it.
The town was surveyed about 1820 and for some reason
the platter laid it out at 44.5 degrees from north
south. That makes normal descriptions of north, south,
east and west complicated and confusing.
:-)
For simplicity since it doesn't really matter I will
say that Water Street runs east and west and that the
bridge ran north and south. Basically all of the town
west of the bridge was spared and most of the town
east of the bridge (and the bridge) was badly damaged.
Our rental house and building is about 200' west of
the bridge.
We were not there for sight-seeing and while we did
want some pictures of the bridge damage (an old
friend) we didn't bother taking a lot of pictures of
the destroyed houses etc. choosing to respect the
privacy of the residents instead.
An elderly lady at the far east end of town was sucked
from her home and dropped at the river bank about 50
feet behind her house. Her house which sat on a slab
was then ripped completely off of it and pretty much
dropped on her as a pile and then slid over the river
bank with her underneath. They found her laying on the
bank with many broken bones and according to one news
source she was impaled with a piece of 3" diameter
limb. She was Life-lined by chopper to an Indianapolis
hospital where The last I heard she was still in
critical condition. All other injuries were fairly
minor. I'm really surprised that the chopper was
flying in the weather we were having. They are pretty
quick to not fly in bad weather.
We got back home about 5 PM but the weather has been
too stormy to get on-line to post this most of the
evening. We dozed off around 8 or 9 PM and I just woke
up and thought I'd get online before the next wave of
lightning popped up.
Here is a link to the bridge pictures Diana snapped
and a few others: (note that on my slow dial-up
connection it takes several seconds for the pictures
to come into focus)
http://picasaweb. google.com/ robinson46176/ MoscowIndianaTor nado

Here is a link to a site with some very good "before"
bridge pictures: (a few shots show our woods there)
http://www.galenfry singer.com/ indiana_covered_ bridge_14_ 70_07.htm

They hope to have some power again by tomorrow. They
have classed it as an EF3 tornado and think that it
might have been a double at times.
http://www.hprcc. unl.edu/nebraska /enhanced- fujita-scale. html

Time to go back to sleep, we didn't sleep a lot last
night...

-- 

"farmer"

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
   -- Charles Duell, Commissioner of US Patent Office, 1899

Hay & Straw Exchange (Buy it, sell it and trade it.)
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Francis Robinson
Central Indiana, USA
robinson at svs.net