It was April 16, 1998. I remember everything about that day.
I picked my kids, then ages 5 and 4, up at daycare about 3pm and went straight home. It was bright and sunny. A little while
later a storm appeared to be brewing. We loved to sit on the porch swing of our circa 1895 Victorian home and watch the storms
come in. I took the kids out with a book titled "Where the Wild Things Are" to read while we waited for the storm.
Ok, the wind got a little rough and I said that maybe we should go back inside. About that time
the phone rang and a friend or relative, I can't remember now who it was, told me that a tornado was headed toward my neighborhood.
Our old house had survived one tornado already. There was one in 1938 that took nearly the same
path that this one did and was equally destructive. Our house was constructed of solid masonry. This means that there was
no wood framing put up first like you see on new construction these days. It was three bricks thick. During our renovation
we did tear out the plaster walls and put up wallboard and some framing on the inside but the bricks were the original.
I told the kids we should sit in the hallway and not near the windows. It only took a few moments
for the tornado to pass. The whole house hummed like the sound made when you put wax paper on a comb and hum over it. It was
so loud that I didn't hear our rear chimney crash through the lean-to greenhouse on the back, nor did I hear the tree in the
side yard crash onto our upstairs deck. The street turned very dark and you could see objects passing by. Our front door had
the original beveled glass in it so we could see what was happening. Part of a gas station sign two blocks away blew up the
street and did some minor damage to my car.
Afterward it was strangely quiet then the sun came out. The power was out all over the neighborhood
because hundreds of utility poles were ripped up out of the ground. The weather reporters cited winds in the 200+ mph range.
The kids and I went outside to assess the damage. We didn't have much. Two of our four chimneys came crashing down. The greenhouse
had a gaping hole in the roof and several of my husband's stud(hubba hubba) orchid plants were destroyed. Our upstairs
deck was damaged. Surprisingly, the free standing glass greenhouses in the back yard had only a couple of broken panes
of glass and a fence was blown over onto one of them. Our total insurance repair bill was about $30,000 which was nothing
compared to the street directly behind us.
The following pages show photos of the damage on the street behind us. Our neighborhood was
urban(a 40 minute walk to the heart of downtown) so these were evenly measured city blocks separated by alleys.
