The weatherman didn’t lie. The storm moved fast and brutal over my house, though no tornado touched down on my street. Technically, the tornado-strength winds stemmed from a microburst. In the end, it hardly mattered. Downed trees and power lines extended for blocks in every direction from my freshly decorated apartment.
Emerging from the storage closet and venturing outside, I thanked God I got out of my apartment. The storm left the stately, beautiful oak in the front yard twisted up out of the ground, resting on the roof and one sidewall of the duplex.
Its limbs plunged into my apartment, knocking in the ceiling of my living room on one side and part of the kitchen. Adding to the problem, several inches of rain flooded my entire apartment, draining down into the apartment below. The h
