For my essay in interviewed my family friend April and my mom Jennifer. The first interview I will be talking about is April’s. She was in Hurricane Hugo in 1989. My mom was in a tornado.
April lived in Monroe, NC and she was about 12 or 13 years old when hurricane hugo hit. It was almost midnight when April’s parents came rushing into their bedrooms telling them to run downstairs. She was with her entire family- her parents, sisters, and brother. Her dad had taken the couch and flipped it over like a tee-pee so they could hide under it. She was very scared. Big limbs and trees were falling everywhere. The wind was blowing so fast that it was howling and it sounded like a crying baby. They hadn’t evacuated because there was nowhere for them to go.
The storm lasted through most of the night then it got very calm. April thought that the storm was over until her dad told her that they were only in the eye of the hurricane. It continued by morning and was over before the afternoon. Luckily, nobody she knew was hurt. Her dad cut up the limbs of the fallen trees with a chainsaw to get them out of their yard. They didn’t have power for two weeks so they used kerosene heaters to heat their bathing water. Since they had city water they didn’t need power to run it. They cooked what they had left in their refrigerator with a camping grill. After about ten days their schools power turned back on so they started going back.
127 our experts are availableright now
In August of 2005, my mom was on a work trip and one of her coworkers said to drive down to his house is Baraboo, Wisconsin for dinner. They heard the tornado warnings they took shelter in his basement. The tornado lasted for about 30 min. None of them were prepared for it but nobody they knew got hurt. The roofs were torn off of houses and there was major damage around the area. Since this was before iPhones, my mom was worried because my dad didn’t even know where she was and he also had no clue that she was in a tornado.
The first storm story was about hurricane Hugo and the second one was about a tornado. The storms also occured in different places. The first one took place in Monroe, NC while the second one took place in Baraboo, WI. Both of the storms caused significant damage to buildings. They didn’t last the same amount of time, one was longer than the other. The hurricane was in 1989 and the tornado was in 2005.
You should always prepare and/or take shelter for a storm so you don’t get hurt. For example, you wouldn’t want to be standing outside in neither a hurricane or a tornado because they are both dangerous. If your local weather station tells you to evacuate, you should evacuate as quickly as possible. Prepare for power outages by getting a few gallons of drinking water, portable chargers, flashlights, candles, etc. So overall, just be safe during storms.
References
- National Weather Service – Hurricane Safety
- Ready.gov – Tornadoes
- NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information – Storm Events Database
- American Red Cross – Hurricane Preparedness
- The Weather Channel – What to Do If a Tornado Hits Your Home
- National Hurricane Center
- USA Today – Hurricane vs. Tornado: Which is More Dangerous?
- The Weather Channel – Severe Alerts Map
