Family and Consumer Science teacher Meghan Baggett was in her classroom doing the Chopped Challenge with her students when the sirens went off. She followed the standard procedure for tornado warnings, bringing her students to the theater, where they stayed.

“As I was watching the sky turn green, I was thinking about how much stuff we had going on at the moment. To reduce the amount of panic that I figured probably would happen if the alarm just started going off, I announced to my class that we’re probably going to have a tornado, and that we need to remember to turn off our stoves [and] our ovens,” Baggett said.

Baggett described a lack of fear in the classroom despite the urgent situation. However, as she started on the path to the theater, many students were already packed into the hallways, making it difficult for her to keep track of her own. 

“It wasn’t very scary at the moment. I don’t know why it wasn’t scary, because there wasn’t rain or thunder, you know, the sky was just turning a different color, and there’s a lot of wind,” Baggett said.

She recounted that her students became more anxious in the hallways due to the presence of other students. Once in the theater, Baggett found it challenging to find her students. She found it increasingly hard to regroup as the lights shut off due to the power outage.

“I think that taking attendance when we got to our safe place was impossible, because once they hit the hallway, all of the classes merged. As far as classes going to a certain place, that didn’t happen,” Baggett said. “So I was trying to search for my students, mainly just to have a conversation, make sure everybody was all right, and [everyone] was there. But I couldn’t find a couple of them. And then it went pitch dark.”

After the panic that packing into the theater had caused, Baggett saw that the roads outside the school were littered with trees. She recalls having done drills and hearing the tornado sirens in the past, which is what mentally prepared her for a real disaster.

“Honestly, I’ve never had an actual tornado get that close, or anything like that. So I think that’s also part of why I wasn’t [panicking] so much,” Baggett said.

Baggett was forced to take many detours to get back home. Once arrived, she discovered that her home had lost power.

“We didn’t get power back until Sunday. So, we lost all the stuff in our fridge. And it just seems like every time we have a power [outage], we just went shopping.”