Surviving Tornado Alley: A Personal Account

At the time of the natural disaster that occurred where I was, I, Guy Webster Russell, or as most people had referred to me by my middle name, had been living in Arkansas City in Kansas, an area which is widely known for being the spawn point of gruesome tornadoes, right near a hazardous area of Tornado Alley. It took place in the mid 1990’s, and started in a bright, sunny afternoon when I was working at a hospital I was a CEO of. I had shown not much but a little anxiety inside of me and more dedicated hard work throughout the occurrence of the disaster, and I just kept calm. This was because I had served in the military and the Vietnam war. Long after the time spent in both of those events, I had become a stronger person both physically and

I had the role to broadcast code black to the staff of the hospital which meant nurses and staff would move patients into hallways, and that all room and fire doors were to be shut in case a tornado went near them. Soon after that, both the ER and ambulance prepared for a large incoming of new patients, training instructions were being yelled out all across the building, doctors were being called to come into the hospital and more that you couldn’t get in your head all at once. Visitors of the building were even separated into groups based on how serious of an incident they got into, though most patients only had issues related to debris from the tornado. For example, a lot might’ve had glass somewhere stuck into a sensitive part of their body. Throughout all of this, I had been helping out many and also authorizing staff orders. Every event that happened at the hospital during this tornado was not anything extraordinary, it was just as if you were working normally, but you were prepared for something that would bring in a little more visitors than normal. Even after the tornado ended and many stopped coming in, we would continue work like normally. There might’ve been 1 or 2 more extra people involved in the incident that came in every once in awhile, but even then, it was like before this. It wasn’t much