A Tornado Touched Down by Mandy Rosko

A couple of them, actually. I live in the Ottawa area, and I’m lucky my place didn’t see any damage. We lost power for a couple of days and some power poles fell over, but not anywhere I could see from walking around my neighbourhood.

 

Some people lost their houses. I didn’t think we had tornados like that. I thought we just got the occasional wind storm. Someone told me they didn’t think we’d ever had a tornado, period.

So I’m counting my blessings. My apartment wasn’t damaged. The worse that happened was the screen door fell off, but that thing was on loose footing to begin with and can be put back on. Others in the city lost everything. Their houses, cars, clothes, anything the wind could take.

So I’m glad we didn’t get anything major in my area of town. I’m grateful I was able to go to my brother’s house to spend time since he’s got power, and I’m grateful to hear from my neighbors that power is back on in my building, so I can head back tomorrow and get back on track with my deadlines.

It was such a strange time. I didn’t know it was a tornado until later that night when I checked my phone, my apartment lit up by candles and fairy lights, and saw the news.

Wow.

My dad called to make sure we were all right, and I spent much of the next day charging my stuff at the mall which did still have power.

I’d never seen so many people in the hallways using any outlets they could get their hands on to charge their gadgets.

The more prepared of these people brought power strips they could plug into those outlets to give them more space for others to come in and share the plugs.

 

So this post doesn’t have anything to do with writing, but be grateful for the things you have, back up your work all the time, not just to USB sticks, but also to places like Dropbox, so if your computers ever get fried by the storm, you know your cover art, contacts, and works are safely stored where you can get to them after the fact.

 

You never know if your computers or even home could be gone in one night. Prepare for the worst, keep water bottles around, and have your phone charged so you know if a storm warning comes in, and just in case, buy that First Aid kit you’ve had your eye on but never picked up…

 

Mandy Rosko