Throughout my life I’ve struggled with anxiety. It’s been a hindrance in my day-to-day life, worrying about this or that until I work myself up into a panic. While I was growing up, it never occurred to me exactly why I’m like this, why I have anxiety in the first place. It never occurred to me until I started learning about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). On June 11, 1998, I experienced my first tornado. I was only three years old.
It was just me, my mom, my brother, and our dog and two cats at home. My dad was on a business trip and my sister was still at the high school. The sky started growing darker until it looked like it was dusk outside. It began to hail, good sized chunks of hail. Not exactly baseball size, but still enough that it would hurt if you were to stand out in it. Our power went out, sending us into almost complete darkness. I remember looking out the kitchen window with my mom, watching the hail. I was curious and excited enough that I wanted to go out and play in it. I had never seen hail before.
Then, I heard the siren go off. It was a long, drawn out, eerie sound that made my blood run cold. My mom herded us downstairs into the basement, holding the big radio we had at the time and a flashlight. Our dog and two cats went into the closet under the stairs, and we huddled down in the little “hallway” between the stairway and the wall. The windows were on the other side of the basement, and so the stairway acted as our shield in case the glass burst and shattered. By this time I was scared, not knowing why we had to hide and why it was so dark. I could feel the tension in the air bouncing back and forth between us as we crouched there around the radio, which was tuned in to the weather station.
We waited there for what seemed like an eternity. Everything was quiet except the radio. I couldn’t hear any rain, hail, or wind outside. Everything was just...still. Then, the air pressure changed. It was a noticeable difference, as if something was sucking the air out of the atmosphere. Suddenly, a noise that sounded like a freight train started growing closer. I was shaking, my breathing coming in short gasps as my heart was racing. I started thinking about how I didn’t want to lose my home, all my toy animals, my family, all the things I love. I was thinking about things a three year old shouldn’t think about.
The twister was upon us, and the noise was so loud. I clenched up and braced for our house to go flying. It was right outside the house, but our house didn’t move. As soon as it had come, it was over. We listened and waited as the “freight train” continued on, growing silent until we couldn’t hear it anymore.
Later after the tornado was gone, we assessed the damage. Shingles had been stripped from the roof. Debris was all over the neighborhood. A house across the street from us had taken the full brunt of the tornado, but it had skipped over our house. The most our house got was roof damage and cracks in the wall on the side facing the tornado. When my dad arrived back from his trip right after the tornado, my child-self ran up to him exclaiming, “Daddy! Daddy! A tomato hit our house!”
The houses across the street from our driveway.
We lived right in front of a woods and a reservoir, and even today there still lies debris and downed trees from that same twister back there. The tornado had a length of 13 miles (how much it traveled) and width of 800 yards. Its “lifespan” was only 18 minutes, but caused $5 million in property damage and 8 injuries. It was a category F3 tornado.
Always seek shelter if a tornado is approaching, don't wait. Always go into a central part of the house or complex you're in, such as bathrooms and closets, away from windows. Stay on the lower-most floor of the facility; basements and crawl spaces are the best. If you're on the road, find a ditch and huddle up at the bottom of it. The strongest tornadoes can pick up and toss vehicles, and even weaker ones can bust out the glass windows. This video shows the raw power of tornadoes and the damage they can inflict on, well, anything really.
The Greentown, IN tornado of 1998 influenced my life more than I expected. I periodically had nightmares about tornadoes, either watching them pass by me or them chasing after me. They were more frequent when I still lived in the Midwest, and now that I’m finally out of Tornado Alley, they only come once in a blue moon. I became deathly afraid of thunderstorms, and whenever one would arrive, I would listen for the tornado siren to go off. Whenever it did, I would suddenly panic, sometimes being induced into a panic attack. Even during the weekly tests every Friday at 1 pm I would get chills when the siren started up. When I was still a child, every night before bed I would ask my dad, “Daddy, are there going to be any thunderstorms tonight?”
Close-ups of the houses across the street.
Even today I’m still terrified of thunderstorms. I can watch them from a distance, but if they’re overhead or coming directly my way, I want nothing to do with them. It’s a fortunate thing that they are not as strong here in the mountains as they are in the Midwest. Out in the Midwest, when you see a giant, anvil shaped cumulonimbus cloud heading your way, you know you’re in for a rough time (unless you love thunderstorms, then you’re about to have a field day).
That tornado shaped my life into what it is today. It knocked me flying in the direction I headed down, whether that direction is good or bad is debatable. It was a spark for my anxiety, a catalyst.
