Dr. Lauren Compton wasn’t overly concerned when the tornado sirens went off during the eighth hour. After nearly 15 years of teaching at Clayton, she had never had to shelter during a school day.

“I thought, probably what every Midwesterner thinks, okay, sirens are going off. No big deal,” Compton said. “Everybody just grabbed their backpacks and walked calmly down into the basement.”

After escorting her students to the basement and riding out the storm, Compton emerged to a much different scene outside. She planned to head just 0.8 miles down the road to pick up her kids from Meramec Elementary. Instead, the drive took 30 minutes.

“Brentwood had a lot of traffic. It was just crazy down there,” Compton said. “I think it was right around Corporate Park Drive [pointing at a map] where the traffic light was down in the middle of the road.”

She eventually turned into the neighborhood surrounding Meramec Elementary, and after struggling to find an open street, cut through an alley onto Venetian and parked in the opposite direction on Meramec Avenue, getting her close enough to walk and pick up her children.

“Rosiline is the street I normally take, but as soon as I pulled onto that street, there was a massive tree blocking it,” Compton said. “Central was also blocked, and they said Davis was completely impassable.”

When she finally arrived at the school, she found the building still had power, though her kids seemed troubled.

“My daughter’s teacher had sent me a photo of her during the shelter-in-place. You could tell she looked upset,” Compton said. “My son’s teacher sent me one too, and he was being comforted by a friend in class.”

Although she felt relieved that her kids were okay, the experience left her thinking about how close the storm had come.

“For me as a parent, it was realizing how close it came to their school, and it could have been a very different pickup process for us,” Compton said. “Even on the way back, I probably watched 15 to 20 emergency vehicles racing east on 40.”

For fellow Business teacher Jim Maddo, reaching his son at Wydown Middle School proved even more difficult.

“Hanley was closed. Then I tried to go down Big Bend, and Big Bend was also closed,” Maddock said. “Then I went to Forsyth, and that only let me go so far before I had to drop down to Forest Park Parkway.”

Traffic on Forest Park Parkway came to a standstill for around an hour, and Maddock watched people climbing out of the Metrolink that had just lost power.

“There were people jumping off the MetroLink, climbing the fence, and hopping over the barricade to get out,” he said. “It was nuts.”

Eventually, he cut through the underground WashU parking garage, arrived on Skinker and parked at the corner of Wydown and Skinker.

“They weren’t allowing people to drive down it. I told them I had to get my son, and they said, ‘You can only go about 50 yards,’” Maddock said. “So I walked the rest.”

The walk was short, but disorienting, with trees, debris and downed signs littering the streets and sidewalks.

“At one point, I asked my daughter, who was with me, if we had made a wrong turn,” Maddock said. “You couldn’t see the street signs. I thought we were lost.”

When he finally reached the school, the staff asked him if he was picking up anyone else.

“You had to be there in person to get your kid. I know a few parents were frustrated, but with trees down everywhere, they really had no choice,” he said.

Maddock’s son had been sheltering in the auditorium when the storm hit.

“He told me his ears popped. Then the power went out, and kids started screaming,” Maddock said. “No one really knew how bad it was until after it was over.”

Nearly two and a half hours had passed from the time Maddock left the high school to the time he returned home.

“McKnight was shut down because of a downed power line, so I had to drive all the way to Lindbergh and then up to Manchester,” he said. “It was a route I’ve never taken before just to get home.”

Though both families made it home safely, the quiet drive afterward provided a sharp contrast to the chaos of the afternoon.

“For the most part, they just kind of wanted to sit in silence and listen to music,” Compton said. “They were quiet the whole ride home.”