Tornado leaves mess for families
January 20, 2022
Junior Nadia Lawrence was taking a Snapchat video to send a friend as the EF1 tornado went right over through her backyard on Jan. 8.
“It sounded like the shingles of my house were being entirely ripped apart,” she said.
The tornado hit the Kingwood area, damaging many homes, especially those in Trailwood Village and Forest Cove.
In Lawrence’s yard, the tornado caused the fence to break andleft behind four big fallen trees.
As the tornado was hitting, Lawrence’s little sister was screaming.
“She was just like, ‘Mom, I don’t want to die!’” Lawrence said. “And I was laughing because that’s how I cope with these kinds of situations. With my little sister being scared out of her mind, my hands were shaken up, I was terrified, and I just didn’t know what was going to happen.”
Even after the storm passes, Lawrence could not fall back asleep, worried the high winds would return.
The situation unfolded differently in sophomore Exa Nix’s home. She slept through almost all of the storm.
“My mom was panicking though,” Nix said. “My little brother was in the room and she had him go under the bed for safety in case windows started to break.”
Nix was shocked when she woke up and saw the damage to the back of their house.
“I didn’t believe my mom at first because I was like, ‘There are no tornadoes in this part of Texas,’” Nix said. “She said, ‘No, seriously, guys there was. I saw it with my own eyes.’ It was all just crazy.”
From water soaked floors needing to be replaced to huge fallen trees needing to be removed, Nix’s home was damaged. Their back porch roof was hit by a fallen tree.
On Sunday morning, many families were left with destruction to clean up.
“I think the worst of it was when the trees fell on houses and destroyed people’s livelihoods,” Lawrence said. “It’s hard because everyone on the street wanted to help each other, but we all had to deal with what we had going on first.
“It was hard seeing everyone struggling. We helped as much as we could because we had others who had it worse than us.”
The community worked together to serve those who needed help.
“Sunday at 8 a.m., one of our family friends showed up with kolaches and donuts and they started helping out while I was at church,” Lawrence said. “When I got home, I started helping them at around noon and we didn’t stop until it was about 7 p.m.”
Nix’s family was also aided by friends. Junior Abby Hunt’s dad showed up with a chainsaw early and started trying to get the fallen tree out of their yard. In total, about 30 people showed up to help.
“We were really grateful because we were able to get that tree out of our yard without having to hire anybody to do it,” Nix said. “Then there are people bringing us food even after the tree was cleared. Overall we’re very lucky that we had all these people to help us.”
