Well, my pictures do not completely depict the damage caused by the tornado that came through here but I’ll try. You see, cleanup has occurred for two full days and what I’ve got here isn’t the worst of the damage. First off, you should know the proximity to my home. I’ve taken a Google Map cropping and added points on it to demonstrate where the photos are taken in relationship to my home. Here’s the map:
My home is at point A. The corner at point B is about 100-150 yards away. The darker grey area is Greenwood Cemetery and is about 100-150 yards away also.
These two pictures were taken of my back yard before KC cleaned it up (yes, she cleaned it up and not me!). Also, the third picture is the debris stuck on our house. (The debris is now off as a friend’s son cleaned our house off with a power washer.)
    

These next three pics were taken down the street. The first two were at point B. The last one is looking from point B down to the corner of Logan and Newell.
    

Now we move over to Lucas Street. These pictures were taken of points D, E, F, G, H, and F again.
    
    

This next one was taken at the corner of Lucas and Logan from point I. The second in this set was taken from point P.
  

This final group is of points J, K, L, M, N, and O. As a note, when our kids were younger we took them to the house at point M. As of this morning they still didn’t have electricity in that house.
    
    

All of this damage within a couple of hundred yards of our house makes us realize just how lucky and blessed we have been in this disaster.

Friday, KC and I took a vacation day from work and went over to ZDog and J’s house. It was ZDog’s birthday and J had purchased a basketball hoop for him… so… I spent Friday digging a hole and then filling it with QuickCrete to set the pole that will hold the backboard and rim. ZDog had a great birthday (today) but what happened back at home was un-fricking-believable!

An F3 tornado went through Fruitland, a quiet little town just south of Muscatine and pretty much ripped then entire town to shreds. I have learned that no one is allowed in or out unless a) they live there or b) they’re on the cleanup crew from FEMA. Holy Crap! Then, the tornado lost a little bit of it’s strength and hit Muscatine as an F2. And not just anywhere. About 200 yards from my house, power lines are down, trees have been uprooted, houses have roofs, walls, siding, shingles, etc gone. I’ll go out tomorrow and get pictures and post them. The damage is unbelievable. KC and I drove by Greenwood Cemetery 2 blocks from our home and you can actually see a path of uprooted trees and trees that have been splintered from their trunks – trunks that are up to 2 feet in diameter! It looks similar to what one pass of a mower would look like on a lawn. Like I said, I’ll have pictures tomorrow – it is simply unbelievable. The last thing the tornado did was to touch down again on the north side of town about 400 meters from where I work. There’s a car dealership there that has had cars lifted off the lot and dropped on other cars. The damage is simply unbelievable. Click here to see the Quad City Times photos. Click here to see the Muscatine Journal photos.

You’re probably wondering what happened to my house. Nothing… nada… zip. Well, we do have a lot of debris in the yard – broken branches down, a sheet of plywood, some siding, but it’s not from our house. Our gas grill and deck furniture didn’t even get moved on the deck. (One “bad” thing is that the other dead willow tree in our back yard is still standing – YUCK!) We have had exactly two things happen: 1) we have small debris plastered on our siding and windows. It looks like a lot of grass, leaves, straw, etc. just got stuck there. 2) KC’s car had a broken chunk of a 1×6 hit it so she now has two dents on the passenger side fender. About two blocks away, the place where our kids’ former babysitter lives is covered with very large tree branches and all kinds of crud. (Pictures tomorrow.) We were incredibly lucky and blessed to not have such a thing happen to our home.

Happy birthday, ZDog!!

Happy birthday, Nick!