Welcome to Kansas

We arrived in Kansas on a Sunday night. On Wednesday we had a severe thunderstorm that really scared the kids....loud thunder, lots of lightning but that was about it. I explained to then that if it got bad the sirens would sound and we would go to the shelter. On Thursday we were hit with severe thunderstorms and then...the dreaded sirens indicating a tornado warning. Now for those of you who are not familiar with the terms..that is an indication that either a tornado has been spotted heading your way, or a storm that has produced tornadoes already in its path and is still indicating patterns of a tornado touching down is heading your way. Either way you are to immediately take shelter.

Now you may be surprised to hear this....but I am TERRIFIED of tornadoes. We have lived in Alabama and Texas in the past so we are not strangers to these storms. However, now my kids are old enough to understand so I have to put the brave face on. So we were staying in temporary housing and their storm shelter was the laundry room which was partially underground. When the sirens started the storm didnt yet appear to be anything to worry about. In fact Ben, who had not been sleeping well was sleeping soundly as were the kids. So what to do? I didnt want to scare them unnecessarily if the storm shifted paths. I looked outside and discussed with the neighbors across the hall what they planned to do. At this point the sirens turned off. I decided to go back in and wait and see. About ten minutes later there was a knock at my door. To my surprise the sirens were back on and I hadn't even heard them. At any rate the neighbor informed me there was a tornado spotted heading straight for us (about 10-15 minutes away). I decide I must wake up Ben. He totally thought I was kidding. I explained to him that there was no way I would wake him knowing how hard of a time he had falling asleep if this were not real emergency. He listens to the radio and decides that we do need to head to the shelter. Waking the kids was no easy task. I realized then I could not wait til the last minute with three sleeping kids. Just as we got to the top of the stairs for the shelter a huge bolt of lighting hit close to us and the thunder clapped so loudly I literally caught air when I jumped. We all made it safely to the shelter along with many other families and their pets. It was so noisy inside we could barely hear the storm. We had a radio and were trying to listen to find out where the storm was. Most of the explanations seemed as if it was literally on the post. Turns out it just hit the neighboring towns. It hopped over us. It hit SW Manhattan which is about 5 minutes from where we were. It hit a new home subdivision and about 30 homes were destroyed and only foundations remaining. KSU in downtown Manhattan also received a lot of damage. We later learned that it almost completely wiped out the city of Chapman (60-80% of the town was destroyed). The next day we went out to see the damage and found that Ben's fraternity (his chapter was at Weber State) house had lost their roof. He volunteered to help remove their belongings in case it rained again that evening. He also helped clean up the grounds a bit. The pics I am posting are from Manhattan. It was amazing to see the destruction in person. Thank goodness there were no fatalities in Manhattan. In Chapman there was one death..the man was found outside his mobile home. I met two police officers from Chapman as I was searching for a home. They had just rented a townhouse. Both families were in their basements at the time of the storm. It did give me peace to hear that is something you can survive.