That one time I got hit by a tornado.

Photo Credit - Andy McNeill

One day back in 2014 I had just moved into a new dorm room over the summer between my sophomore and junior year of college. I was staying in that dorm over that summer due to working in town that summer.

Almost none of my boxes had been unpacked yet as I had no help in moving, which was a lot of work to do alone. My little brother whom I was very close with had decided to come visit me and spend the weekend with me since we hadn't seen each-other in a few months.

The first night, we decided to watch the movie Pompei. As we were watching the movie, some storms rolled in and began to pick up fairly heavily just outside my window on the 4th floor of the building in the picture.

Then all of a sudden, the rain just... stopped and everything went quiet. My brother and I heard some knocking noises, so we became curious and walked over to the window to look out. We saw a family of raccoons playing in the dumpster. We watched them for a minute or so and then they got spooked by something and scrambled off into the woods.

Then, it began to rain lightly again. And all of a sudden, the raindrops began to SWIRL towards the ground. It was a second later that I realized why.... I turned my gaze to the horizon and what I saw put a fear into me that I hadn't experienced in all my life. There was a tornado headed right at my building coming up the hill. Just out of nowhere.... There were no sirens. No tornado warning. Nothing....

My instincts kicked in immediately and I knew we had mere seconds to act. I screamed at my brother to run for the door and down the stairs to the first floor. I told him to never look back, not even to see if I was following. Just run. NOW!!!! I could see the terror in his eyes, but he trusted me implicitly and ran the moment I commanded him to.

For some reasoning I still can't explain, I hung back so that I could force the window shut, as if that was important. I then turned and started to run across the room to follow him. That's when the window started to bow, the air was sucked right out of the room and it sounded like we were being ran over by a freight train. It was a horrifying noise.

By the time I made it to the door to the hall, I saw my brother hanging on the handle with his full body weight desperately trying to get the door open, but it wasn't going to budge. The tornado had vacuumed the door shut.

I knew the door would never open and we were trapped. The ceiling began to give under the stress and my instinct kicked in again.

My only thought in that moment was to save my little brother. That's all that mattered, saving him, even if I didn't make it.

I grabbed him and threw him into the closet. Then I tackled him to the ground and covered his body with mine to protect him from the glass and debris. I held him there for about a minute until the shaking, roaring, and howling of the tornado had passed us by.

I was amazed that we had made it and that the building had held up. I grabbed him again and opened the door and we ran down the stairs to the first floor. Water was coming in everywhere from under doors. As I was climbing down the stairs I got my first glance of the devastation outside and I saw bike crumpled into a ball, and the car pictured above. It had been tossed like a rag doll.

We then spent the next hour slowly making our way to an untouched and safe building across campus with a convoy of other people. It was like nothing I had ever seen before.

In the end, my parents came to retrieve my brother and I stayed in town to assist in cleanup and to try to salvage some of my things. The university deemed my building unsafe and I was not allowed to get my own things. Turns out that a sprinkler pipe had broken in the ceiling above my bathroom and flooded my room with water. Unfortunately since I was not unpacked, my things were in boxes on the floor and I lost almost everything. My car had the rear windshield shattered by a branch and minor paint scrapes, but thankfully was in much better shape than the car pictured above.

I am so thankful that my brother got to go home safely and that no one died through the entire event. Not without millions of dollars worth of damage to my now Alma Matter and home city for 4 years though.

Just goes to show how precious family is and how quickly the unthinkable can happen.

TLDR: My residence was hit head on by a tornado, shielded my brother, everything mostly okay in the end.

P.S.: This was the first of 3, but the only one I saw with my own eyes. I actually have been through 2 more tornadoes since that were very close calls, even though I never saw the funnel with my own eyes.

More pictures courtesy of a university photographer: https://www.uwplatt.edu/files/styles/high_resolution/public/image_fields/photo_gallery/170614084.jpg?itok=O_35QH2N