Day 4,054 —Surveying the Aftermath of the Tornado—

 

On my way to work this past week, I had driven by a lot of the downed trees in Forest Park, but I hadn’t yet run into the city to take any pictures. I decided to drive into the loop and take some pictures as I ran. I have no plans of doing any real long runs leading up to my 100-mile race in 12 days, but I still wanted to see everything before more things had cleaned up.          

I saw low power lines, fences destroyed, and trees uprooted from the ground. There were still so many trees looking broken off, or taken by the roots. I saw one building in rubble. I will go into North City tomorrow and take some pictures of the downed houses, but I am not looking forward to it. I keep thinking about the trees because I just saw them and how long they had been there to offer shade for so many years. There is no quick fix with trees. New ones will be planted, and many years will pass before the trail at Forest Park will look like it used to.          

However, trees are nothing compared to the houses where people who lived their whole lives are now. I want to go see it because I feel like I should understand what happened, but I don’t want to at the same time. It was hard enough to see all the downed trees. I am not ready to see houses and buildings dismantled. What I keep thinking about is how close the tornado was to my office and how I left only about an hour before it hit. The sun was shining, and even though I saw the warning on my phone, it just didn’t look like any bad weather was close.