I tracked the path of Thursday’s series of deadly tornadoes on a police radio frequency from the safety of my office desk.
Sometimes, it’s hard to judge the gravity of a situation from the intermittent radio communications between emergency responders and dispatchers.
But when I heard a police officer or firefighter in Windsor come over the radio and say, “We are in total destruction,” I knew it was simply more than some simple wind and hail damage.
What a terrible feeling to see one of our own communities leveled in a way that I think we normally associate with middle-of-the-night twisters ripping through Oklahoma and Kansas. I’m sure many of you thought of last year’s Holly tornado. I immediately thought of the large tornado that destroyed the eastern Colorado town of Limon in 1990. But, even for a Colorado native, the thought of severe weather before lunchtime is odd.
Maybe it’s because we’re so blessed in Colorado with our weather. Sure we get heavy snowstorms from time to time and severe weather especially around this time of year is always a possibility. But, all in all, we’ve got it pretty good here.
More unnerving than the obvious destruction and loss of life is that sense of vulnerability that it brings. I had that feeling a couple other times this past month as a cyclone took a large amount of life in the country of Myanmar and a massive earthquake did likewise in China.
I can’t honestly equate our tornadoes to those massive human tragedies. Still, it gets you wondering. I’m sure scientists could point to climate change and global warming as a reason just as Bible scholars could point to end times.
I don’t believe in God smiting us with a heavy finger of fury. Do I think sometimes a higher power shakes our little snow globe to remind us who’s in charge? Yeah, I think that.
I’ve never seen the human spirit so strong than in disasters like this. I have no doubt the town of Windsor will get back on its feet just as Limon did and Holly and Greensburg, Kan., continue to do. There’s no better feeling than seeing a community rise up together from the rubble.
And on the public safety note, let’s look to the skies, people. This can happen anywhere and we need to keep each other safe.
