Twister in Town

It's been quieter than usual here on the Carrier Hotels web site this week. That's because events in the "real world" have kept me busy. A tornado decided to rearrange my yard Tuesday morning, and the rest of the week has been a bit of a blur.

Folks here in New Jersey had spent nearly a week worrying about whether Hurricane Isabel might cause storm damage. Isabel was pretty much a non-event. But with little or no warning, the tornado took less than five minutes to transform our neighborhood into a maze of twisted trees and fallen power lines.

I was sitting at a traffic light en route to the office that morning, preoccupied with all the things I wanted to accomplish at work. Suddenly, the light rain turned torrential, the air was filled with flying leaves and debris, and my car was rocked back and forth by a ferocious wind. I've seen enough Weather Channel specials to know a tornado when I'm sitting in one. My cell phone went off. It was my wife. "It came through the backyard," she said. "All the trees are down."

As the winds subsided I tried to drive home, but huge trees blocked most of the local roads, and it took nearly 20 minutes to retrace the mile back to our house. Miraculously, everyone is okay and the house is undamaged. My wife was in the family room when the storm hit, and heard a roaring noise and looked up to see our backyard filled with clouds, dust and debris. She retreated to an interior room, and when she emerged, the yard was a war zone of fallen trees.

The neighborhood is a wreck. Four toppled trees blocked our street and damaged several nearby houses. Fortunately, no one was hurt or killed, so far as we know. The Associated Press account of the tornado notes that there were at least 100 downed power lines in Lawrence, along with dozens of trees. We're one of the houses in our development with underground power lines, so PSE&G had our lights back on by 3 pm. Many of our neighbors were without electricity until late Thursday.

It was a long day cleaning up, and much remains to be done. It was a very different day from the one I set out to have. My office sat empty. A bunch of hosting and data center companies issued press releases. Other web sites ran them. The world kept spinning all day long without new content on CarrierHotels.com.

But I haven't forgotten you, and we'll be back trying to post news on our traditional schedule, weather permitting.