Disaster!!!

On Friday afternoon, we decided to do some shopping. We went to the mall, and we decided to put the windows up because there was a dark cloud in the distance. So, we go inside and do our shopping. About thirty minutes later, we hear a deafening roar, and it just starts pouring rain and blowing wind. All the shops in the mall started closing, so we walked to the Target connected to the mall. We went and looked out the front door, and it looked like we were in the ocean - litterally, the rain and wind was so bad it was just in sheets against the glass. Then the hail and thunder started, and the lights were flickering. Finally, the sirens went off, so we all had to go to the back of the store. Then, about five minutes later, they told us we could leave, and we walked out into a completely flooded, but oddly sunny parking lot. It took us about a half hour to drive a five minute drive because the power was off all over the city and every store was closing so everyone was on their way home. We didn't really realize what had happened because we were in the safe, windowless Target, but when we got home, this is what we saw:


The main road into Village Green - littered with downed trees.

The wind was blowing at 80-90 miles per hour.

This is the big pine tree right by our house, the only shade on the playground. Now we all have to sit under slides to find shade.
It brushed right up on their sliding doors, but amazingly, didn't go through.

The cleanup happened pretty quick. It was incredible how many people happened to have chain saws stashed in their basements.

What a forlorn view of our park. You can see another huge branch on the groun in the background. And that is our awesome missionary, Elder Tuki, who was out helping check on people and clean up as soon as it happened.

This is a big pile of hail that fell. This is about and hour after it fell, and it's still about a half inch in diameter. We heard there was nickle-size hail coming down.

There were trees on power lines, and downed power poles all over the place. We went without power for over a full day, and some people in our complex went three full days!

Pretty amazing, eh? Can you believe that only one window was broken in the whole "village."

This is hard to see, but it a picture of my now demolished zuchinis. None of my garden made it.

These are tomatoes, now just sticks poking out of the ground.

All in all, it was a pretty exciting event. We got to test out our emergency prepardeness supplies, and experience living without electricity for an extened period of time. It was actually quite fun. And, thankfully, no one was hurt.