Something Happened in Terre Haute!!

To see the news about what I am going to talk about, go here.

So, little Terre Haute was visited by a tornado yesterday. The storm knocked out all power on campus for eight hours, starting at about 8:15 PM on Thursday night. It's a good thing I had my homework done already, or there might have been problems. However, the students with tests and homework the next day were in a bind. Poor guys.

I, however, was forced to fritter the night away. And what better way to do so then to go storm-chasing? We were in a complete black-out and received word that a church had been destroyed by a tornado, as well as our Terre Haute International Airport. So we (four guys I don't know at all and George from down the hall) jumped into a guy's SUV (I had the trunk...the blanket made it pretty comfy...the large subwoofers didn't) and went off to find said church.

The road was closed, but the orange signs didn't QUITE cover the entrance to the road. So away we went. We finally found the church...a man was putting out road cones. We parked and walked up to the church, where a TV crew was setting up flood lights and cameras. We really wanted to get on camera, so we went up and talked to the people satnding around. They were really friendly, and they advised us not to go around the church because there were live wires.

The side of the church we could see was pretty torn up; I have never seen tornado destruction before. It was quite the sight. But we got bored with that and ventured around the building (if you see striped pajama pants on television, that was me!!!). It was really muddy and there was a trampoline (or pieces of it) that had blown in from somewhere down the street. The church's signhad been ripped out of its cement base and was laying by the street. The entire side of the roof was gone, and we heard something fall inside as we walked around. Trees lay on their sides, completely uprooted and tossed on the ground like little playtoys. Our scrutiny of the situation was cut short as George pointed out to long silver cable that he was standing on. Yeah, the previously live wire. That startled us enough to make us leave.

So we piled into the SUV and headed on to the next site: the airport. We were seriously disappointed when we drove around the airport, however. We only found two bent light poles and a connector that had been blown over. Apparently, however, there was an entire hangar ripped apart that we missed somehow.

That was my joy ride for the evening. I didn't have an alarm to wake up to, so I asked Jess to wake me up in the morning...yeah, but at about 4 AM, every light in our room turned on, including the one directly above my bed, and I thought it was the Rapture. Well, I set my alarm and went to bed. It was grand. That was my Thursday night/Friday morning.

Gave a presentation today and had all of my last classes EVER for for this quarter! Finals next week...yaaaaay. Then I'm DONE!