the full story

So here's what happened.

I was closing last night, and Cameron's mom came up to give him something. He came back in and said "Oh my god Kari, there's a tornado warning, we need to go home for real." We basically thought he was joking. And besides. Our work wasn't done. Also, a car is the worst place to be in a tornado anyways. Then at around ten my mom came in and said "There's a tornado in the area, I don't want to wait in the car." so she helped me with my section, then I went to go help Natalie with her section... by then everyone was watching the storm more than actually working. David was on the back patio when a lightning bolt struck the parking lot about ten feet from him. It sounded like a car accident or a gunshot. Everyone burst out laughing because he ran in the store acting like he was getting shot at. I mean, the lightning already struck, it's not like he was going to be able to dodge it.
 A few people left (like Dionne, her 14-year-old daughter was home alone and she didn't want her to get scared/hurt/whatever) but several of us stuck around. My mom kept calling Ryan to get updates, who told her that our power was out, and that he was watching several tornadoes forming pretty much in our back yard. So Kari said she would stay with us until it was safe for us to go, and the work wasn't done anyways. Brittany, Natalie and I were the only sales associates left at this point, so we kept working on go-backs... then Kari (store manager) said "Well, I'm going to clock out and sit on my fat butt because my feet hurt. You guys can do whatever you want." I opted to keep working so I could keep making money since I had to be there anyways, but everyone else just camped out at the cash registers. About ten minutes later Kari yelled at me "STOP WORKING!!!!" and I shouted back "Why? I'm still on the clock!" to which she replied "I don't care, come sit down" so I finished what I was doing and said that I wasn't going to disobey a direct order... I ended up just sitting there on the clock for about an hour. Yay free money.
 Around midnight we clocked out and headed home. Which it seems like everyone else in town was doing, because the roads were as busy as if it were noon. We took a detour to see the damage. At the end of Idols road there were a bunch of cars parked and some guys were walking around with flashlights and stopping cars. They weren't city workers, just random guys who discovered that there was a huge mess of power lines down. Which explains why our power went out for 14 hours.
It turns out that the worst of it was behind my house, in Bridge Pointe. Literally within walking distance... I've done it several times to go visit Blakers.


That's the only actual picture I could find, the worst of it is on this slideshow:

http://www2.journalnow.com/static/multimedia/storm-photos0509/

Image 5 is from that neighborhood. That's the house I was talking about that was completely demolished with the woman and her two children inside.
They heard neighbors talking outside (a friend of my family and a police officer who lives there.. I'm not sure if there was anyone else or if it was just the two of them) and started screaming for help. Luckily the kids were fine and she got out with nothing but a few scrapes.

I found this all out this morning. My mom and I walked through our neighborhood up to the road block with our neighbor to see if there was anything we could do (they weren't letting anyone on Frye Bridge unless they were official help or lived there.) So our neighbor went back home and my mom and I stayed to talk to Erica Taylor of WFMY News 2, who had been reporting on the damage in various locations since one o'clock this morning. She told us what she had seen when she was back there, and in other areas. She had also done an interview with Duke Power and told us that they were expecting our power to be on no sooner than tomorrow afternoon or evening.
We came home an our power was on, but it only lasted for about twenty minutes. It went back out for a few hours and is on again now... I'm not sure if it will last or not.
My mom and I went to lunch at Cracker Barrel since none of our appliances worked. It was apparently the headquarters for the tree removal crews, and Duke Power's crews as well as a lot of the people who were without power or helping the rebuilding crews were all having lunch there. I've never seen Cracker Barrel so crowded. Our waitress said that this morning there was an hour wait for tables.
We then cashed our paychecks and went to the mall so I could buy some more work shirts. I'll post pictures later, because I really am that bored.
I asked if I could have my schedule switched so that I could work Tuesday instead of tomorrow. I didn't know if we would have power or not, and I didn't want to come to work after two days of no showers or air conditioning, so they told me that was fine.
But when I got home the power was on anyways. Oh well. Saturdays drive me crazy regardless. I got a shower as soon as I got home, though, just in case the power goes off again. I was already starting to feel icky and I didn't want to get stuck for another night.