What is it about nice people that attract total idiots?Nice people are martyrs. Idiots are evangelists.

SOCK IT TO ME BABY!!!

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

The storms, the numbers, and Piper

I sat down tonight to blog about the monstrous wave of Tornadoes the last few days, and the past few months.  Even as I did my usual numbers-please research on the topic, I watched video live of damage in Bedford Indiana.  As I tried to find out about Denning Arkansas, the town destroyed last night, I met Teena Evans and her four year old daughter Piper.



They found Teena up against a phone pole... Piper, hurt but alive, over a hundred yards away.  It didn't look to me- if I learned nothing else- that Denning was a town that had a lot of options as far as shelter.

How do you begin to cover such a topic?  Coming into tonight, there were so far this year 20 counties with 5 or more deaths in a single day.  38.6% of tornado deaths since 2008 happened Sunday in Joplin, Missouri. The tornado death toll of 2008-2010 was more than doubled on April 27th alone.  504 Teenas so far this year.  Several dozen Dennings and Joplins.  Countless hundreds of Pipers.

How many Dennings until we get a Maples, or Zulu?  How many Joplins until we have a Huntington?  Is the next Birmingham Fort Wayne?  On the 16th of April, the plant our company operates in Sanford NC was missed by less than a half a mile.  It's getting too close, too personal, even at this distance.  One look at Piper Evans, orphan, tells me that.

2 comments:

  1. CWM:
    That's a remarkable story about Piper.
    Glad she is relatively all right.

    As for the weather (and it's recent consistency and severity)?
    If I didn;t know better, I'd think someone's "tampering" with the atmosphere.

    Subtle changes can cause adverse effects...that much IS proven.

    And WE (the USA) do have the means to affect such changes on a fairly large scale.

    What would be even more insidious is if ANOTHER nation had similar "means".
    Seems that some theories might have a smattering of truth, if we look deep and hard enough.

    Good post.
    Stay safe & dry up there.

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  2. I've seen the coverage of the Joplin tornado and it's just heartbreaking. Being only a few hours away, there are several groups in our area doing fundraisers and getting donations together to send. It's great to see communities coming together to help one another.

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