In Tornado Alley, touchdown means a life is destroyed

12 April 2012

The first time you hear a tornado siren it is slightly surreal, almost funny. The second time it's frightening.

We're leaving a jazz restaurant in Kansas State when from 1,000 loudspeakers I didn't know existed comes this noise: BLLLLLEEEEAAAARR RRRRRRRRR.

What does it mean, I ask a man racing towards a car. "It means get the hell home, son." We are in Tornado Alley and Tornado Alley is kicking off.

The tornado rumbles past Johnson County, the well-to-do Kansas suburb where I am visiting family, doffs its cap in deference, and smashes into Joplin in Missouri, 50 miles up the road.

The tornado hits St John's Regional Medical Centre with such force that medicine and medical records are later found in neighbouring counties.

It is the worst tornado in America since they started keeping track of these things. At least 122 people are dead.

When I arrive home, nothing works, except the TV. The internet is kaput. Twitter is silent. When it's really needed, when it might actually help, modern technology has failed.

The family is split in two. The half who made it home or never left are heading to the basement armed with essentials: blankets, cookies, vodka.
The other half is missing. We later find out that they have been bundled into the cooler at a delicatessen in town. They joke that they may die, but not of starvation.

The TV news comes on air and delivers this: If you live in X, the tornado just went past, so you should be ok. If you live on Y, it's 10 blocks away. If you live over on z, you have three minutes. Get to a basement.

Amid disaster, there is always small optimism, even humour. A woman reports that her most prized possession, her kitchen, is in remarkably good shape, considering. The change is that it has moved next door.

Four tornados are swirling above town. Sometimes they seem to be aimed at the house I'm in, other times not.

Tornado language is odd - "touchdown", for instance. As in: "We have touchdown on 119th Street and Roe Avenue." That means someone's life was just destroyed, assuming they are still alive. They say the risk of death by tornado is one in five million.

Today that statistic makes no sense. The odds are either zero or 100 per cent and you can't tell which.

After a while, it seems we have been spared again. We venture outside to an extraordinary scene. The sun is shining as bright as ever. And the sky is black.

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