News Cut: June 1, 2008 Archive

The lessons of the Rogers tornado: The Paulsons' story

Posted at 8:41 PM on June 1, 2008 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Weather

This is the first of several posts this week on recovering from tornadoes.

September 2006

June 1, 2008

Christy Paulson of Rogers, Minn., was upstairs after putting her sons to bed, watching TV and not paying much attention to the darkening weather outside on September 16 2006. Her husband, TJ, knew a late summer storm was coming and, because he "always liked storms," he went downstairs to watch. (Listen)

"All of a sudden it hit pretty hard," TJ, told me Sunday afternoon, both sitting in the dining room of their home which was in the path of a tornado that destroyed several homes in the neighborhood and killed a girl a few doors down. "All of the furniture on the deck went across the deck and just flew off. That was about the same time we felt the house shaking and we said, 'OK, we've got to get to the basement.'" A 250 pound grill was launched off the deck and onto the back lawn.

"All of a sudden my ears plugged up," Christy said. "I jumped out of bed and he was already running up the stairs. We each ran to a different kid's bedroom. I could barely open my son's door. We ran down the stairs as fast as we could. "

"Right after we reached the bottom of the stairs," TJ continued," that's when the windows in the back of the house here blew out."

"That's when I thought we were toast; I thought we were never going to make it," Christy said.

Seconds later, by the time they reached the basement, it was over...

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