Sophomore Audrey Simanowitz was surprised but not worried when the tornado sirens began during her eighth-period Chemistry class on Friday. She and her peers made their way down three flights of stairs to the school’s cramped basement, where they waited out the storm.

“People were not scared, they acted normal. We get a lot of tornado signs, so no one thought it was a big deal,” Simanowitz said with a laugh. “Someone was like, in a joking way, ‘imagine if something actually happened,’ and I said ‘nothing was going to happen.’ Then my house got destroyed.”

Her house was badly damaged in the storm. After her standard 10-minute ride home turned into an hour of driving, and even some walking when her street was blocked, she found multiple trees in her backyard had fallen and hit parts of her roof and pool.

“I saw that my house was broken and everything was ruined. I felt despair, [and] distraught, but I do admit it was actually kind of fun to climb over everything,” Simanowitz said. “I was also mourning over myself that I would have to clean all that up.”

She spent much of Friday afternoon cleaning up the tornado’s damage. Despite it all, though, she still found moments to smile. One such moment was her brother retrieving their father’s favorite deck chair from the pool.

“My dad’s favorite chair slid into the pool, so it was sitting at the bottom. The pool looks like a pond, it’s disgusting and ugly, and it’s covered in leaves and everything, and it’s green and it’s gross,” Simanowitz said. “My brother put on goggles, jumped in the pool, and fished it out like a frog and he retrieved it. My dad picked up the chair and brought it back up, and he’s sitting in it right now.”