The Deadliest U.S. Storm of 2015....&......Happy New Year
I had my neurophysiology shirt on, and I walked around SMU noticing the flag pole was leaning, the winds were picking up, the sky was darkening, and I had been arguing with my instructors who told me to take medical leave, which is difficult for us in the medical field to admit when we are sick, if we miss deadlines, and do everything they ask, and it puts us behind. My email from one of the department heads said that he was not being fair to me to make up all the work, another told me that since I was physically attacked, I could not just pretend it didn't happen, to me it was UTD telling me that they took my money for the past year, and they would like to keep it, and ask me to pay again & give me the runaround. One of the deans had been pissed off at me for months for taking an extra credit class that she did not approve of, so it was unclear if it was bureaucracy or the chattering of former alumni upset at it's history, asking me to leave constantly, or if the associate dean's daughter who has multiple personality disorder, had taken a toll on influencing her mothers decision, either way, I have been the one being attacked for the most part on the internet, & on one site in particular, the slander included our now deceased Dean Bertland Moore, making claims that I "go" to UTDallas. I put things up in my locker in the activity center and asked them how long my lease was for, and had walked through the graduation ceremony, partially upset that most of the attacks during this past year, were over inviting survivors of human trafficking, that were at Taft High School, that I had spoken to members of congress about, I had wanted them to come see me at graduation and think about going back to school. Everyone had for the most part vacated campus, so I went to reminisce on being locked in the basement with others at SMU where they told me they knew I wanted to see the storm and I needed to stay with them inside after I had already made rounds through 6 or 7 buildings years ago to ask if everyone was alright, it was also during a tornado/storm/threat time.
My first thoughts were, on December 26th at 2:46PM, well I missed being here when the bank was open to make a deposit, and now I actually have nothing to do, except wait for my son's flight to come in at 7:40PM. It was very calm walking around SMU, I went down the entire walkway from the flag poles to the middle of campus where the entrance is, and I thought, everything is shut down, it is a holiday, I have been told to take time off and enjoy the holiday, with the exception that some higher-ups like chancellors or whatever they were, were thanking us for being in the health care field, because they knew we really did not take breaks. What am I going to do for the next 3 or 4 hours? I had no clue, it was a disaster within itself, I felt like a complete failure, having already fallen asleep in my bathtub after the attacks on Paris, friends were checking on me from other universities, some at Harvard, asking where I was, I counted up the hours I had spent towards this entire year, planning for my chess class, updating my life goals, It was 5:35PM and I was driving on Lemmon because I could not see the entrance very well to DFW, had to turn around, and I got an emergency update, this time it said take shelter tornadoes. It is in moments like these were our true tests really come from. At first I ran through the 3rd floor with the moving walkways, and thought I really don't want a tornado hitting all of this glass while I am trying to take shelter. When I get there, everything is shut down, and part of me is still asking, but what about my son's flight? I told a group of people who didn't know where to go, and none of us where suppose to be leaving the building to take cover, stay away from glass, there is a tornado a few miles from here that has touched down. I chatted up a pilot Michael Weisser, and told him he should go back to school and apply for the astronaut program. The San Antonio International Airport told me that they could wait until 11PM for the storm to clear, but that 5 different planes had already been diverted and nothing was allowed to fly into Dallas. So we rescheduled his flight until the next day, and I waited until we were free to go.
My first thoughts were, on December 26th at 2:46PM, well I missed being here when the bank was open to make a deposit, and now I actually have nothing to do, except wait for my son's flight to come in at 7:40PM. It was very calm walking around SMU, I went down the entire walkway from the flag poles to the middle of campus where the entrance is, and I thought, everything is shut down, it is a holiday, I have been told to take time off and enjoy the holiday, with the exception that some higher-ups like chancellors or whatever they were, were thanking us for being in the health care field, because they knew we really did not take breaks. What am I going to do for the next 3 or 4 hours? I had no clue, it was a disaster within itself, I felt like a complete failure, having already fallen asleep in my bathtub after the attacks on Paris, friends were checking on me from other universities, some at Harvard, asking where I was, I counted up the hours I had spent towards this entire year, planning for my chess class, updating my life goals, It was 5:35PM and I was driving on Lemmon because I could not see the entrance very well to DFW, had to turn around, and I got an emergency update, this time it said take shelter tornadoes. It is in moments like these were our true tests really come from. At first I ran through the 3rd floor with the moving walkways, and thought I really don't want a tornado hitting all of this glass while I am trying to take shelter. When I get there, everything is shut down, and part of me is still asking, but what about my son's flight? I told a group of people who didn't know where to go, and none of us where suppose to be leaving the building to take cover, stay away from glass, there is a tornado a few miles from here that has touched down. I chatted up a pilot Michael Weisser, and told him he should go back to school and apply for the astronaut program. The San Antonio International Airport told me that they could wait until 11PM for the storm to clear, but that 5 different planes had already been diverted and nothing was allowed to fly into Dallas. So we rescheduled his flight until the next day, and I waited until we were free to go.
11 tornadoes had touched down, and at first the news report said that it was coming in from Italy, Texas, so I called and left a message, because I did not know if the town had been wiped away and I needed to pay a traffic ticket, and so I left a message that I hoped everyone was ok with my number, but never got a phone call back. My red cross items from the last EF5 tornado cleanup in Oklahoma, were already in my safety deposit box. I tried signing up with the Red Cross through Facebook, & someone told me from the Red Cross that 15,000 people signed up, so there was plenty of volunteers, I went to recovery.rowlett.org for donating clothes, and took a pile of about 5 trash bags full of donation clothing to the Salvation Army, as the instructions from the Red Cross people. We went into Rowlett to do disaster clean up and I acted as a team leader. I asked the Medical Reserve Corps if they needed me to bring my medical supplies anywhere where I had training in Collin County for natural disasters.
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