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    shhhhhhhLacey Donohue
    11/18/13 12:39am

    My fiancee's great aunt lives in Washington, in the hardest-hit area. We found out - from an aerial photo of her mostly-leveled neighborhood - that the tornado spared her house and her neighbor's house, but got everybody else on the block.

    It was one of eeriest things ever to learn a family member's fate from an aerial photograph, online...

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      e.nonLacey Donohue
      11/18/13 7:40am

      and there will be an endless loop of the lord's prayer being said by someone watching the tornado form instead of ... you know ... taking his family to shelter.

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        elaine layaboutLacey Donohue
        11/18/13 2:06am

        the more i see, the more grateful i am that the most destructive parts of the storm system missed chicago ... especially since soldier stadium was full of football/beer fans, a couple of hundred of whom were still stuck on the upper decks, waiting their turn to descend to shelter, when the tornado sirens blew

        given that a simple strip mall fire on friday night so taxed emergency resources that a stuck elevator full of people had to wait a couple of hours for a fire dept rescue team to travel from o'hare to downtown before they could be freed, i'd hate to see how long it would take to get help around here after a serious, natural disaster ... and then there's the dearth of available hospital beds in the city ...

        they say that tornado alley is shifting eastward with the change in climate and will soon encompass chicago ... i hope that's one bullet we'll continue to dodge

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          reggiebushlateralelaine layabout
          11/18/13 9:23am

          The NFL should have postponed the game. If a tornado had hit Soldier Field, imagine the resources necessary to deal with the situation. The NFL is greedy and is more concerned about its lucrative tv schedule than the safety of its fans.

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          elaine layaboutreggiebushlateral
          11/18/13 10:22am

          i'm surprised that the city didn't force them to, having seen the near-disaster in may, when a supercell tornado just missed oklahoma city as it was gearing up for the big 12 baseball tournament

          if you have an already dense population and limited emergency services, why would you allow a sports event to attract thousands more potential victims when you know you are in the path of a deadly storm? every ambulance and fire truck in the city would have between sent to soldier field if the city had been hit ... the rest of us would have been shit out of luck

          well, us and the folks in the cheap seats, who couldn't get under cover because the fans below them had reached safety and were in no hurry to move further down the concourse

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        imweezleLacey Donohue
        11/18/13 2:19am

        Peoria resident here. I was in a Barnes and noble when we heard the sirens. We all retreated to the back bathrooms and got into a corner. It was really windy and we could hear the rain. Sirens ran for 10 minutes maybe. Once the sirens had stopped the store have an all clear so me and my girlfriend left. Driving in the rain was miserable but we got home safely. Didn't see any twisters but the winds were ridiculously strong. East Peoria is only about 4 miles from my house so I'm lucky we missed the tornados' path. I work in East Peoria, as does my girlfriend. The East Peoria school is closed tomorrow. It'll be interesting to see what work is like tomorrow for me.

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