[AT] Disastrous weather...

Thu Jun 5 05:15:23 PDT 2008

Glad to hear that your property and renters are ok Farmer.  I couldn't open 
your links for some reason but that's not important.

Charlie
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Indiana Robinson" <robinson at svs.net>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2008 1:39 AM
Subject: Re: [AT] Disastrous weather...

> 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.)
> http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/HayandStrawExchange
>
>
> Francis Robinson
> Central Indiana, USA
> robinson at svs.net
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