The March 28th Tornado (2000-2010) (Fort Worth, Grapevine: mattress, houses, buy)

[JJG]

This sunday will mark the ten year anniversary of the tornado that ripped through downtown Fort Worth. There were 5 deaths and between $400 and $450 million in damage.

Most buildings were restore, only a few were demolished.

The hardest hit, of course, was the former Bank One Tower, one of the tallest in the city.



The former Landmark Tower was imploded in 2006, the tallest building in Fort Worth for that.

Since then, Fort Worth has rebounded and still remains one of the best downtown areas in the country.


Thoughts?

[DFWAg]

I remember looking out the window and seeing a greyish-green sky in the distance. I was just a kid then and very scared!

[JJG]

11th Anniversary

http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/25679_1318565337656_1636466644_773906_3244392_n.jp g (broken link)

[ClarenceBodiker]

That was a crazy time. I was living in NRH back then, and I remember downtown had just come alive a few years prior to that. At the time I thought this was surely going to kill so much of the progress downtown Fort Worth had made. Here we are 11 years later and it's better than ever.

[Dark Serge]

I was 8 years old at the time, and was living at my grandmother's house in the Southside. I mostly remember the sky looking like pure death and seeing debris scattered all about the morning after. Although it scared the living patootie out of me at the time, that tornado is what started my fascination with weather; something that has done nothing but increase to this very day.

[Squirl]

My husband had died in January that year and I was living in Mansfield. My late DH had left money in his will specifically for his mother to sell her home in a scary part of south Oak Cliff and buy something better suited to her. I was managing the whole transaction for my MIL. We had a (sold) closing on her house scheduled for 3/30 and a (buy) closing scheduled for her new place on 3/31. The tornado's path was going over her old place , then her new place , then my own house . So there I sat in the bathtub -- sirens blaring -- for the first time in my whole life without a spouse or kids at home...stressing over 3 houses being flattened at a point when my life felt like an empty shell. The tornado was pivotal in my new world- helping me get a clear vision of my life as it was and would be. For the first time I ever I was completely alone -- in that bathtub with a mattress over my head -- and had to depend on myself alone. After, seeing the impact of the tornado helped me understand what a little speck I am and how little control we each have at times. I was able to release on so much of my sadness and simply surrender to "que sera sera"

[jaime_mac]

I was 20, working at a restaurant in Grapevine. This was the first big storm I had been through since moving to Texas in 1999 and I was SO scared. I remember my manager telling us if it came this way we'd all go in the walk in with the customers. Luckily it never came towards Grapevine, but oh that was a scary day!

[catman]

I was standing out in my front yard, three miles to the south, watching it. I coundn't really see the tornado, just a greenish cloud of indefinite shape. It was spooky.