Hey, it's Waters from the Waters Wake Up Call.
Thank you for all of the derecho calls today as we commemorated the fifth anniversary.
A lot of pain and heartache and money and insurance problems and roofing problems and goes on and on and on.
Now, first of all, here are some calls that I got back in 2020, the day after the derecho hit.
from the archives.
What were you doing last night?
I was watching the news.
Oh.
I'm
so sorry to hear that.
Do you have a place to stay?
Okay.
So tell me what happened if you
can.
Right.
probably wouldn't be talking to me right now if you'd stayed where you were at.
Yeah, if I was sound asleep, I wouldn't be talking to you.
Oh boy, at least you got your health.
But what do you have a plan for what you're going to be doing now?
You know, a new place or what are you going to do?
I have no plan.
And that was Sammy from August of 2020.
But two years later, on the second anniversary of the derecho, Sammy called me back with an update.
Oh, a lot better.
I got a real
nice apartment
awesome
job then where you working
sammy
at warley warehouse driving
the forklift awesome man well i'm glad everything worked out glad you were able to call and give me a little update
thank you
Airport.
Yeah.
And I've been listening to radio.
I never heard it was thunderstorm traveling at 75 mile an hour.
It's no tornado.
Yeah.
I was walking around.
I left AirFact and it started following me.
It was real dark and it was long windy.
So, once I got to the airport, I jumped by the snow on my truck.
And all I could do was look for an intersection back in the wind.
Back there where I went through.
Yeah.
I watched the tree snap over.
Wow,
quite a sight, I'm sure.
Yeah,
smart, smart.
They were even giving the time when it was going to be hitting Hayawatha and I remember getting in the car because it was like, they said it was like 20 minutes away.
So I got in the car and I raced home so I could be with my wife.
and we could all get downstairs and be safe.
Like you said, I saw the dark clouds behind me, and you could just see them following you.
Meanwhile, I'm behind somebody going 20 miles an hour and a 35, and I'm going crazy.
Don't you know what's
coming, people?
Hurry up!
figures
doesn't
it
figure man yeah there
was stuff everywhere whether it
was
Yeah,
great seat you had, I'm sure.
Did you get any
video of that?
Yeah, you had other priorities.
You were thinking of other things, I'm sure, at the time.
Thanks
for the help of getting all of those out.
That's got to be long, tedious
work.
long and very tedious.
They said there's a truck dumping at one of the two sites every three seconds.
Because there's so much debris and trees.
Yeah, they take the landfill or Mount Trashmore where they've got the compost pile there.
It's got to be half a square block.
Wow.
That really is Mount Trashmore, isn't
it?
If you get a chance, if you go down there and kind of look around, it's one of the most craziest things I've ever seen.
Well, it's just crazy how widespread this all was and how high the
Wind speeds were, it's like nothing I've ever heard before.
I'm a volunteer firefighter for Blarstown.
Our pagers went off and they said they had 90 mile an hour to sustain winds in Blarstown.
Guts of 120.
That's official.
So you're not only picking up this mess, you're also a volunteer firefighter.
Yes.
It's impressive what you're doing.
It just, it doesn't go unappreciated.
Oh, absolutely.
God
bless you.
You have a great day.
I'll talk to you later, Mike.
I'm hunting for ice for my wife.
Oh, you're hunting for ice?
Yeah.
Uh, yeah.
Ain't we all?
Yeah, finally got some cell service and stuff like that.
Oh good,
yeah.
Glad you're able to call at least.
Yeah.
Good luck on the ice.
Oh, I'm working on it.
time trippy.
Let's slip into present day and see what you remember about the Durecho and your own personal experience.
Hey, good morning.
I want
to tell you a little Durecho thing.
Oh, good.
I have to confess, my wife and I say we caused the Durecho because we lost everything, a paid-for house and everything we owned in the fall of 2008.
Yeah.
So we bought a new house.
It took 12 and a half years to pay it off.
And a week before the ratio hits, my wife, I said, how much do we owe?
Let's pay off the new house.
We did.
She wrote a chat, put it in the envelope, said, there you go.
Now the tornado can hit.
And one week later, we're watching the ratio come in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I
mean,
we lived through it.
We drank cocktails and walked into it and said, hey, we've lived through a lot worse than this.
Right.
Let's enjoy it.
Okay, but you were okay with the derecho, unlike with the flood.
Absolutely.
Oh, see, I thought you were gonna say, we paid it off and the derecho came through and we lost everything again.
I'm so glad you didn't.
There wasn't that kind of an ending.
No, we had a couple thousand dollars worth of damage resolved, but we were having cocktails and looking out the window.
I even had my safety glasses on in case it blew my windows in.
See, that's smart.
That's the only way to look at a storm through a window is with your safety glasses.
There you go.
But like I said, my wife and I, it was our fault.
We paid off
the
house the week earlier
and
then it hit.
So we caused that.
Yeah.
Well, for everybody in Eastern Iowa, I say, thanks a lot.
There you go.
Thanks for the story, man.
I appreciate it.
I'm glad you didn't lose everything for a second time.
Well,
you kept the two most valuable things at least.
So good for you guys.
Thanks.
Appreciate it, Mike.
Wonderful show.
Gotta be honest, I just got the ability to actually fish my house just this year, just this summer after the great show because of having to fight the
Oh,
you hear so many stories about those stinking insurance companies.
Four years of fighting, including into the appellate court.
It's been a long, long process.
I've been working on getting my house fixed now.
And you know, I've heard that story way too many times.
Insurance is peace of mind, right?
Or supposedly peace of mind.
And you're paying, and you're paying, and you're paying, you know, all of this stuff into the insurance and then what happens when you need it?
Oh, I don't think that quite qualifies.
And then you have to go to court, spend that money.
It's insane.
These insurance companies, it's insane.
Yeah, it's definitely not peace of mind.
It's more of a nightmare on it.
Yes.
Yes.
Hello.
Hi.
Good morning.
How are you?
I'm wonderful.
How are you?
You know, I don't think I'm wonderful yet, but I'm working toward it.
Well, I'll be working soon, so we'll see what wonderful turns into.
Okay.
I can't wait to find
out.
So I was with my daughter spending an overnight in the Quad City.
And we woke up that morning, we checked the news, and the news was like, beautiful weather and all this stuff.
And it's personal, I think it was about 11 o'clock.
I get a phone call from my son, really broken up phone calls.
Don't drive home, bad weather.
Don't drive home.
And I'm like, well, that's really strange.
So I try calling him back.
my husband and couldn't get a hold of anybody.
But we walked to the door.
We've probably been in the mall probably an hour and a half.
And walked to the window and the trees are like blown to the sideways.
And I'm like, what is going on?
And so then we went into a place that had a TV.
And they're showing all of the destruction that's going on through the Cedar Rapids area.
And I was like, oh my gosh.
So anyway, we waited until it was passed.
Had to stop at Blaine's Farm and Sleep on our way home.
And the store was packed with people buying like chain saws and generators and gas cans and saws and I mean anything.
And I'm thinking, should I be buying some of this?
Anyway just to get home we had to like it took five different ways of getting home because we're wires and trees down and like I could barely get home and I had to work that night and I'm a nurse so I was you know desperately needed to work.
Oh my god I'm sure you were.
It
was crazy but comes the next phase of nobody has power and so the hospital is the only place people go so I would say it was exciting and fun and my house got to look totally
totally different and totally reshaped because of it.
So, you know, I think bad things brought out some really good things.
Yeah, I definitely think that's true.
When something terrible to the community happens and everybody works together and I saw a lot of that after the Durecho.
For sure.
Neighbors helping neighbors.
Right.
Neighbors helping strangers and people donating trees to replant trees and helping do that.
I mean, it was just wonderful.
I agree 100%.
Now, you said you
a nurse what was the hospital like when you went to work what was it the night of the derecho
well I wasn't there the night of the derecho because I was out of town in the city but the next week we had to actually set up a clinic I work in the ER so you have your ER and then you'd have to down the hall have like where you would treat like the minor things that weren't like medical emergencies and people who didn't work in the emergency department stepped up and helped and did whatever they could do and so I'm
I mean, it's really kind of neat to see everybody stuff up.
Like sometimes you have to do something different in your job.
Well, I know 2020 was very different with your job with the pandemic and then the derecho.
I just, I thank you for what you do.
Oh, thank you.
Hey, thank you for what you do.
You keep the music running and keep us happy and give us something, take our minds off of work every once in a while.
Well, thank you for that.
I appreciate it.
I appreciate the call.
I appreciate the story and all of that.
You have a great day.
You too.
Thank you.
I recall as I looked out over Cedar Lake and watched the storm closing in all around Cedar Rapids and the darkness displacing all the light and my sense of duty as being a certified lifeguard kicked in and I hurried down to the supervisor's office to ask him if he was going to tell everyone over to the undercom system that they ought to seek shelter in the designated shelter areas.
And he was looking down at his phone
And he goes while I'm trucking the storm right here.
And I go, well, why don't you look out the window?
And he looks out the window and he goes, oh my god.
Everybody, call the shelters over the intercom.
And this guy was a safety champion for the company.
Really?
Yeah.
Well, you know, nothing beats.
Nothing beats looking out the window.
Nothing.
Nothing beats
that.
And you were talking about phones, making people stupider?
Yeah.
Right.
Case in point.
Right.
A lot of times.
And I'll do this when I'm looking at
the National Weather Service versus out my window when they'll say oh it's cloudy and rainy in the corridor and I look out and here it is you know sunny and not rainy.
I'll always give the window perspective if it's different.
Exactly.
But the window perspective is also main priority.
Always.
For a lot of things.
Yeah.
Even psychology when necessary.
But anyway, you've got to go back to work, Mr. Waters.
Have a good day.
So was everybody okay?
It sounds like you saved the day.
Well,
yeah.
And
a tree limb hit a gas structure next to the plant and gas started filling.
the facility and it's like well maybe we should let you guys go home
yeah good idea you got one thing going on outside then you get something going on inside it's like let's all just get out of here yes but i'm still alive so yeah we lived through it that's right man we lived through it weekday mornings 5 30 to