Athens County tornados

I got a call from Dustin Franz Thursday evening, telling me I needed to get down to Athens as soon as possible. (For those of you who don't know, I recently relocated to Columbus after graduating.) Having planned to go to Norfolk, VA the following day, I figured I might as well knock a little time off the trip and come down Thursday night to see the extent of the damage, and plan to wake up early on Friday to work before I continued on to Norfolk.

I made it into Nelsonville at right about midnight, on the dot, and pulled over to talk to a really helpful AEP employee in the Kroger parking lot. She was buying snacks for the crews, and apparently Kroger was the only food store in town that had electricity. She directed me towards an area outside of Nelsonville that had been hit pretty hard, so I headed in that direction. The officers on-site were extremely helpful and allowed me further down the road while it was being cleared.






Afterwards, I went back and edited with friends, then got to bed as early as possible, so I could get up and head back out to the families I had met the previous night.







All things considered, everybody I met was in a good mood. I think the understanding that things can be replaced and people can't struck a chord with those affected by the disaster.