It's Hurricane Season!

Wow, I can't believe it's already June. Today starts the 1st official day of hurricane season 2011. With the way the weather patterns have been lately, I pray that this hurricane season isn't going to be the worst one yet. I've lived through my shared of hurricanes while living in Florida. They are not fun at all. I can recall living through major hurricanes like Opal and Andrew. We stayed in the Crestview High School storm shelter during one of those storms. We had waited until the last minute to leave the area as the storm gained strength, which was a bad mistake. The roads were packed with people fleeing the storms. We drove in back to back traffic for hours until we couldn't go any further inland. The police had blocked off so many roads for our safety. We ended up at Crestview high school, the area in which you'd call "Tornado Alley". As hundreds of people packed in the school, my mom positioned us in the most safe place she thought. It was under the steel high school lockers, where there were no windows, right by the bathrooms. My mom had four children to keep safe so she felt that it was the best place in the school. I could imagine how difficult it would have been if one child needed to use the restroom and she was nowhere near a bathroom. She'd have no option but to take all four kids to the bathroom. We were surrounded by strangers and it was quite a scary thought to lose a child in the school. So, my mom put lots of blankets down under the lockers while sat and waited for the storm to pass. We had been at the shelter for almost a day when the weather begin to intensify.  We could hear the winds howling while listening to a battery powered radio as the storm approached us. Then, all of a sudden we heard screams as people came running into the school. Everyone was in a panic! My mom held us close as we wondered what was happening. A tornado had formed right outside the shelter and was destroying the place. It was tossing cars, bending poles, and ripped off part of the school. My mom prayed as we held her tightly. We felt safe in her arms. The tornado destroyed the powerlines and knocked out the power source to the school. We sat in the darkness as things took a turn for the worse. Remember me saying that we were staying next to the restrooms, bad idea!!! The restrooms began to reak of urine and feces as people continued to use them as they didn't flush. With no electricity or water source, the bathrooms didn't work. We then realized that we needed to switch locations but had no other place to go. The school was already packed with tons of people. We couldn't find another place to relocate to, so we had to endure the smells for another day. In summary, we ended up staying at that shelter for almost two days enduring an unexpected tornado, sticky heat, smelly toilets, musky people, and just the crowds of angry scared people. I'm glad we survived the storm, but a lot of damage was done during the storm and a lot of people were badly affected by it. So, as we enter into another hurricane season my thoughts and prayers go out to all who will be affected by them. I hope everyone says safe this year.