On Tuesday, August 6th, a tornado cut a 200 yard swath from Avon Lake, to Bay Village, to Rocky River.
At 3:45 on Tuesday afternoon, I was sitting at my desk frantically trying to hit a work deadline. I was fairly oblivious to the outside world, even though I was vaguely aware of some storms over Lake Erie. As I typed, the internet went out. I jumped out of my chair and stormed in the boss' office, "how many times is the internet going to go out in this place?" Just then, my phone blared out a tornado warning and within 20 seconds, the storm was on us. The power went out immediately. No phone, no power, no internet, all within one minute. My boss and I paced around the concrete reinforced walls, we were stuck.
We watched as branches flew by and a tree came down on another employee's car. But we were lucky. We were working at the FLAMING SKULL icon. It took until Thursday night to get power back, 9 am on Friday to get the internet back.
But little did I know, the tornado was bearing down on my kid. He was at work at the BLUE DIAMOND icon. Because he, too, was working, he had little notice of the incoming tornado. He said they had a 3-5 minute heads up about the storm, but instead of closing, they stayed open to let the public take shelter. Whereas, my job is in a concrete building with small windows, he is in a building of windows, with just a few reinforced walls. As soon as the storm hit him, it knocked out his power, but everyone was okay. He then stayed and closed up the restaurant in the "dark." (It was 4 in the afternoon.)
To my knowledge, there were no deaths with this specific tornado, but it was one of four which knocked out the power to 400,000 people in the Cleveland Area.
Which is just a quick reminder, you never know when your time could be up, you never know when a family member's time could be up.
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