Monday, March 17, 2008

Mother Nature

Is on a rampage this month. Snow, hail, high winds, up to 14 tornadoes. Look what happened to our city last weekend.



Thankfully no one we knew was injured or displaced, although one of my friends was in the Georgia Dome when the storm hit and her house was only a mile away from Cabbagetown - a subdivision almost completely obliterated. God was definitely watching out for us last weekend! Up here in Marietta we experienced, hail, high winds and a day full of tornado sirens, but nothing too serious. We were actually visiting our good friends Mike and Suzanna and their new baby Caroline over in Norcross when the first storm hit - the one that wreaked the havoc in the pictures above. We knew it was a severe storm, but had no idea the extent of the damage until the morning after. It's hard to believe those pictures were taken only a few miles from where I work.

Speaking of work, last week was insanity at my hospital. A water main broke on Peachtree Street and we had no water for about 18 hours. And just in case you're wondering, no water in a hospital is not a good thing. The hospital next door to us was worse off than we were - they have 500 beds and went nearly 36 hours with not a drop! We were lucky and had about 40% of our flow available at select times over the 2 day ordeal. So what do you do when you have no water at the hospital you ask? Cancel any procedures, bring in lots of water bottles, use pool water to flush patient toilets, send non-essential staff home and supply port-a-potties if necessary. We didn't use them, but the hospital next to us did. It was quite an ordeal, but thankfully we had an emergency plan in place and everything went relatively smoothly. But top that off with the weather last weekend - what a week it was for our patients! Let me say this though, we so take for granted how blessed we are to be living in the United States. You don't think about how nice it is to have things like electricity and running water until you have to go without. I have a whole new appreciation for my toilets now. You don't realize how wonderful they are until you can't find one that works anywhere in a 7 story building!

As an aside, we've had a random car parked in front of our house since last Wednesday and no one seems to know who it belongs to. It is sitting right in front of our house blocking our mailbox and our neighbor's. I filed a police report Saturday, but since they still haven't come to look at it I'm considering having it towed. I was worried it belonged to a missing person, but Jeff thinks someone dumped it so it wouldn't get repoed. How annoying! Why couldn't they have left it in the Walmart parking lot instead of in front of our house?

Anyway - shame on me for complaining about the inconvenience of an abandoned car when so many people lost their homes last weekend. My heart and prayers go out to those affected by the storm. Thank you God again for keeping all of our friends and family safe!

3 comments:

Whitlamy said...

Are you serious...a car in front of your house?!?!?! Hilarious!! And, having used to work for a company that supplied food to hospitals and senior living communities and having had about 15 of our accounts severely affected by Hurricane Katrina, I CAN imagine what a nightmare it was last week for you guys. I didn't realize your hospital was affected. I had heard Piedmont was.

Anonymous said...

How crazy is it that we were just sitting around during the storm having no idea what was happening so close by? Mike and I couldn't believe when we turned on the news after you left. Thanks again for a fun night...I can't wait to try and recreate that pizza!

Brooke said...

As soon as I heard about the tornadoes in Atlanta, I thought about you guys! I'm glad to hear you're OK and the main storms weren't too close to you. Thanks for sharing your experiences!