Storms

Did I ever tell you about the time I was in a tornado?  I was in Minneapolis, Minnesota for a Catholic Charities workshop.  My supervisor and I had gone to dinner at a restaurant on top of the IDS building.  It was a glass building, and the restaurant was very pricey. Neither of us had a big salary, but we splurged and it was fun.

It was early to mid evening, probably before 9 PM, and all the customers and staff of the restaurant were ushered into the basement of the building, because of the tornado warning.  We stayed there for some time.  It felt like several hours, but probably less than 2.  We had not finished our meal, although we were mostly done, and when we were released from the basement, we returned to the restaurant to pay our bill. We were told that no one was being charged for their meal that night, thank you for your patronage. I think we were offered dessert, on the house, but declined.

We learned later that the tornado blew through quickly, but the IDS building was glass walled, and with the breakage of some windows, and the change in pressure, we had to wait in the basement until the panes of glass stopped falling out of the building.

The phenomenon was not unknown to me.  I recalled taking the express elevator in the Hancock Building in Boston, Ma.  There had been more than one occasion when the weather had affected the building so that glass fell from the windows. I think, eventually, the problem was resolved.  But it was a phenomenon that I knew about.