Sunday, June 7, 2009

Tornado!?!




Today during the last 1/2 hour of our church meetings we were interrupted by the tornado sirens and instructed to gather together in our cultural hall. Luckily we were the last ward in attendance at the chapel so there was plenty of room. We could see the funnel moving towards our building 3 miles to the west as it headed towards us. It moved quite quickly above us and touched down about a mile east of us. Southland's Mall and Lowe's received the most damage. Windows were blown out of most of the outdoor mall shops. Red Brick Pizza had interior walls blown out. Trees, park benches and cars were thrown and flipped all over the place. The Lowe's had all of their air conditioners ripped off the roof. A townhouse development across the way was damaged. Some had garage doors blown in, windows blown out and loss of power. They shut the area down for awhile for gas leaks. In all there were 5 different tornados that touched down throughout the Denver area.
Back at our church building as we gathered into the cultural hall, you could imagine their were scared children and to help calm them down we sang primary songs(which helped drown out the pounding on the roof of the huge hail that followed behind the tornado). We were lucky enough to not have any hail damage to our vehicle, but some had dents in their vehicles. The most damage we saw in our parking lot was one member's windshield was cracked all the way across. The hail turned to rain and allowed us to get home safely. Within 2 hours of all of this, the sun was shining and the birds were chirping in our backyard. We feel truly blessed to be safe and unharmed.
There were no reports of any injuries to anyone anywhere after the storm had passed.

2 comments:

  1. WOW!! Glad to hear you guys made it our safe. How often does this happen in Denver?

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  2. wow Lisa! Have you ever been in that kind of a situation before in Denver?? I think I would have been one of those scared crying kids.
    I m also glad there wasn't anyone seriously hurt.

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