It was a quiet, oddly still May afternoon in 1997 when I was walking down the drive to get the mail and noticed what looked like a Blue Norther on the horizon. Odd . . . very odd for this time of year, unheard of, in fact.
But I decided that I'd turn on the TV when I got inside and see if a thunderstorm was brewing and whether not I should put the horses in the barn. When I got inside, I turned to Channel 6, the news station to the north of us, expecting to see the little white words up in the corner informing us of storms coming.
Instead, the entire screen was an abstract painting of swirls of the reds, greens, and yellows of the weather map, with some ominous blacks thrown in, and the weatherman was oddly strained and excited. I listened as he described the path of a batch of tornadoes that was heading from north to south (not the usual southwest to northeast) down the IH35 corridor, currently going through Salado, a town just minutes north of us, heading directly for the farm we'd moved onto in August 1996.
I immediately decided NOT to put the animals in the barn - they would be much safer taking cover in the lower creek area crossing our property than in a pole barn during a tornado with the inevitable flying metal and posts. My daughter grabbed a basket containing the tiny baby kittens and their mother and we got in the car and headed south. (Yes, I know you're not supposed to do that, and I don't recommend it, but it's what we did.)
As we were leaving, I called my husband on my cell phone to let him know we were on the way to Austin. He said, "Why? It's 3:05 in the afternoon; what are you going to have time to do here?" I explained, and he immediately got on the weather website. He later reported that Jarrell was covered with a large black blob - and then the weather radar locked up.
As we were driving south down IH35, listening to the radio station to the north, we could see police cars racing up IH35 in the other direction. I remember thinking, "You REALLY don't want to be going that way." We kept hearing on the radio, "If you can hear this and you're on the highway, you need to take shelter under an overpass." Jess asked, "Mom, should we stop and get under that overpass?" "How fast did they say it's traveling?" "15 miles per hour." "We're going 80. We're not stopping."
We arrived at Priority Copy, my husband's business in North Austin. As the storm was still headed our way, he sent us on to our house in South Austin, which was unoccupied at the time. He called us a while later to let us know that it was all over and that he was heading out to the farm to check things out and that we should stay in Austin. "Not hardly! If any of the horses are injured, I'm their Mom and I'm going to be there!"
So Jess and I headed back to Priority and we caravanned out to the farm.
Getting off the highway, we turned right to head out to our place. We noticed that there was more activity than usual towards town, proper, but didn't realize until later, when we turned on the TV, how bad it really was in Jarrell that day. I don't think anyone did at that point. My husband went down to sign us up in case anyone needed a place to stay, after we heard that some homes were destroyed; there were lots of names on the list already. But it was only over the next days that we realized the magnitude of what had happened to our little community - an entire neighborhood wiped off the earth, right down to the foundations (when we drove by a few days later on the way to visit friends on the other side of the devastation, there wasn't even any plumbing sticking out of the foundations, and on a street with no roads heading off of it, I got lost because there were absolutely no landmarks left, not even pavement on the road). 27 lives lost, including friends we'd made since moving there a short few months before.
The devastation was almost overwhelming, but Jarrell pulled together, and with the support of people from all around the world, we came back. And since then, whenever there's a need, the people of Jarrell are right there, offering a helping hand, passing forward the loving concern that they received in their own time of need.
It's been ten years ago today. There are new houses where the storm destroyed everything, and a park with a baseball field, and a new building where our city council meets, and life goes on, although we never forget those lost ones. We, ourselves, though we had no physical damage (the tornado heading for our house turned east, and the one that hit the other side of town formed after we were already gone), are changed. I pay much closer attention to the weather, and I still remember the odd feel of the air that day. We have a storm shelter now (our son was in college in Annapolis and couldn't get through to us for three days, not knowing if he had any family left or not - he nagged us incessantly until we had one installed, and my husband, after the storm, was trying to figure out how to build a storm shelter that would hold us and 5 horses). We feel more for those in other places who suffer these kinds of tragedies. We hold life a little dearer, after the day the F5 came to town.
Comments(7)