Tornadoes, Basements, & Bears, Oh My!

My son Wyatt is showing signs of becoming a future meteorologist.  Since he was old enough to figure out how to use the television/cable box remote combo, (a skill set that is elusive to many Americans on a good day and most real estate agents stuck in homes hosting Open Houses on days when their University of Kentucky Wildcats are playing in a SEC Championship!) he has often chosen the Weather Channel to fill time until Mom decides to join the land of the living.  Although only in 1st grade, he will leave the Cartoon Network and Disney Channel in the dust to consume Locals on the 8s, at 8 minute intervals for hours. (Oh, and, he could probably provide an up-to-the-minute count of babies born to the female meteorologists as I swear for a couple of years there, there MUST have been something in the water down there in Atlanta.) Anyway, he watches it with an intensity that is mind boggling, not missing a single report by any one of their weather desks, like the hurricane desk or the severe weather desk.  Now that he is older, he will provide up to the minute projections of when severe weather is imminent.  Having said that, he has a more than healthy respect for tornadoes.  Honestly, since the 40 year old maple came down in our backyard, in 70 mile per hour winds last fall, he has an intense fear of them.

Fortunately for Kentuckians, until enough glaciers melt to make my husband's family in Ashland, Kentucky proud owners of oceanfront property, hurricanes are something we just monitor from afar on the news or on Wyatt's beloved Weather Channel.  But tornadoes in Kentucky, my friend, are what I call, kamikaze hurricanes.  Unlike in Kansas, because of our hilly topography, it is difficult for Kentucky tornadoes to sustain themselves & cause several miles of damage.  So here is what they do, they drop out of the sky in an instant, rendering surgically precise devastation, on those that are in its path, albeit for a brief few seconds, and then return back into the sky.  Just like that. 

I am a native of Madison County, Kentucky which recognized a grim anniversary yesterday, the death of 7 people as a result of a tornado outbreak that struck 30 years ago.  Not unlike when JFK was shot, or when 9/11 happened, most Madison County folks can tell you where they were for those terrifying minutes in 1974.  In the last few years, mother nature has unleashed a few deadly tornadoes that wrecked havoc in both the Kirksville area of my native county, the Masterson Station area of Fayette County, and one in 2012 that damn near wiped West Liberty, Kentucky off the map.  

Having grown up in Kentucky, tornado drills in schools were a part of life, and we were taught the skills necessary to determine where to seek shelter in ANY building, should the sirens go off indicating that a kamikaze hurricane was imminent.  In fact, I have no memory of NOT knowing what to do in the event of a tornado, much like I have no memory of NOT knowing how to swim.  In Kentucky, these are survival skills, both hunkering down for tornadoes and swimming, as Kentucky features 49,100 miles of rivers, creeks, streams and tributaries (we are second only to Alaska in the miles of navigable water but whose counting?!)

A few years ago, I had the privilege of working with a Mainer when I worked for a photogrammetry firm (if you are unfamiliar with what a photogrammetry firm does, I would explain it but this blog post is long enough, so go Google it)  For those of you who may not know what a Mainer is, it is one who is a native of the great state of Maine.  So on one of his trips to our Lexington office (he worked in our Bangor, Maine office) my friend Mike, the Mainer, asked me how I dealt with the fear of tornadoes.  To be quite honest, it struck me as an odd question at the time but it was a great question coming from someone who lives where tornadoes are far less common.  My answer was, "Well Mike, to be honest, I have never really thought that much about it, it is just part of living in Kentucky"

To me, the threat of kamikaze hurricanes is a lot like the risk of a massive heart attack. Most likely I will see the signs coming and I will have made choices along the way that either will increase or decrease my chances of survival.  When I bought my "forever" house, I made sure it had a basement where my family could seek shelter when those sirens start wailing and the voice of the siren "God" starts telling me what to do. Which reminds me...I need to ask my friend Shelley, who works for the Fayette County Dept. of Emergency Mgt., if we have a siren setting for an alien invasion, because if we do, I would love to hear the script for that warning! Instead of advising me to seek shelter it probably says something like "Fellow citizenry, I wish this was a siren for a kamikaze hurricane, but nope the aliens are here and we are TOAST!"  Similarly, my home is located within a 3 minute ambulance ride to a major cardiac care unit.  I can't say that I keep a set of defibrillators in the house (as most likely my 3 year old would find a way to get to them and try and use them on her brother!) but I do keep aspirin in the house.  I also keep a weather radio in the house (but in reality I rely on my severe weather IPhone app for that).

But having said all that, here is what I have noticed about Kentuckians, they have a love/hate relationship with basements.  They either love them, or they hate them (mainly because of leaking concerns), but then again those that hate them have probably never really needed one when the sh*t gets real around here. Isn't it astounding how accurate these Doppler Weather monitoring systems have become?!  When Bill Meck, our local meteorologist, starts shouting your street name through the television, you are going to wish you had a basement. I'm afraid these complex detection systems, that can be precise as to the street addresses where the tornadoes are heading, have also given us a false sense of security. Soon you will see parents with 80 inch flat panel televisions mounted in their basements, sending their children outside to play because Bill said the tornado was two streets over so they could come out of their basements.

In my years of showing houses, I feel like it is my fiduciary duty to remind my buyers, especially those from out-of-state, that kamikaze hurricanes are a reality here and that running around your house trying to drag a mattress into your interior, windowless bathroom is not an Olympic sport in which most people hold a medal. After I share my thoughts about that, then I shut up (well, for a few seconds anyway).

To me basements are like guns, it is easy to be against them and all of the potential problems that owning one can cause (and in both cases these problems are very real), until your life is at risk and you realize the choices you made along the way, may cost you your life. 

The saying goes that March comes in like a lion but goes out like a lamb.  In my experience in the springtime in Kentucky, April can be a bear, period. But fear not, Wyatt's addiction the the local on the 8s should give me at least an 8 minute window to head to my basement. Grab the aspirin too folks, because when you hear the train a comin' (tornadoes sound like trains...I know this from school tornado drills), you just might need it in your basement as well.