What Happens When the Disaster Hits You?

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Americans are used to seeing natural disasters on the evening news. In a country as large and diverse as the United States, there are troublesome natural events almost every day. Quakes in California, floods on the Mississippi, lava flows in Hawaii, etc. But when you see a disaster on TV, it is remote, and certainly less concerning. New England is used to dealing with Nor’Easters and the remnants of hurricanes, but yesterday, residents of Cape Cod and Southern Massachusetts were faced with something they normally only see on TV, a tornado.

Tornadoes do happen in New England, but they are by no means a normal phenomenon, and usually they aren’t as powerful as those in the South. By the time yesterday’s twister hit Cape Cod, it was really something. The Boston Globe reports:

Jason Couse and his family were inside their second-floor room at the Cape Sands Inn at about 11:30 a.m., Tuesday when the wind started howling and rain started cascading.

“The next thing we knew, the roof was just lifted up . . . like a blanket,” said the 36-year-old Belchertown resident. “The scariest thing I’ve ever been through.”

They ran into the bathroom and got into the bathtub, he said. A few minutes later, a hotel worker came to bring them downstairs.

The National Weather Service confirmed a tornado touched down in Harwich and Yarmouth, with the maximum wind speed for the twister reaching 110 miles per hour. The tempest left a trail of damaged homes and businesses on Cape Cod and long-planned summer vacations in shambles.

“The tornado itself touched down in Yarmouth and then touched down again in Harwich,” read a statement from the weather service.

Remarkably, there were were no serious injuries reported as a result of the storm, state officials said.

Read more here.

How can Americans plan to face a rapidly approaching, violent tornado? The most important way to prepare is to develop a plan. FEMA has a good guide here for doing just that:

Originally posted on Your Survival Guy.