Riding Out A Derecho From A Hospital Bed

Tuesday

At around 11 am on August 11, 2026, my family and I received matching alarm notices on our cell phones. A tornado was quickly approaching, and the notice urged citizens to seek immediate shelter. We see these notices multiple times a year. Normally, we don’t worry about it and keep doing what we normally do. However, I quickly started to care. Within a couple of minutes of the alert, the sky turned pitch-black, and sheets of rain began to pour down. It looked like it was a waterfall outside my window. I couldn’t even see through the rain. Massive winds started knocking into the doors, and water started to come in droves through the windows. 

My family was wondering whether they should address the water coming through the window and landing on power cords and outlets first or if they should seek shelter. However, they didn’t know how all of us would seek shelter. They could go out into the basement and seek cover, but I couldn’t since I was stuck in the hospital bed. They then debated whether to put me in my wheelchair and stick me in a hallway away from doors and windows or not, and I lay in bed praying to God about delivering us to safety. While doing those things, the tornado passed over us within minutes. It was still raining outside and high winds, but it was less intense. The sky was also lighter. 

Then the power went out. Fortunately, we have a generator, so we were in the dark for just a couple of minutes. We weren’t necessarily concerned at first. We were able to clean up the wet area surrounding all of our windows. One of the wifi routers still worked, so we were still able to watch TV while the rain continued. However, within a couple of hours, the panic started to rise. 

My family and I lost all cell service; the one remaining wifi service stopped working along with our landline. My parents decided to venture outside after the rain had stopped to assess the area. It was terrible. Trees blocked one of the entries into our street; the disability sign outside our house and the ground around it were completely peeled back. A tree had landed on top of my neighbor’s house, and there were trees down in the alleyway. 

Things had never looked this terrible before. However, without any forms of communication, we were left in the dark on how badly the local communities were affected. We went to bed hoping that circumstances would be changed by tomorrow. We were used to having power and internet outages during a storm. Normally, things are back up and running within a day. However, the mobile phones being unusable was a new one that lingered in our thoughts as we went to bed that night. 

Wednesday

Everything was still out except our phones. Cell data was extremely sporadic. We could get some calls, but they tended to drop. My parents decided to go out to see if they could get food and gas. Both went into different areas and found nothing open. Banks, gas stations, grocery stores, etc were all closed in our city and in the towns around us. My dad had described it as looking like a war zone. Trees and power lines were down everywhere. Lots of houses were destroyed. 

From the little that I could get from Facebook (when the data on my phone randomly decided to work), I was able to see that the whole county was affected. People were without power and wondering what to do. People tried contacting the electric company to see what the timeline was for power restoration, but they had no answers. It was very eerie. 

My family was fortunate because of the generator, which allowed us to use electricity and the central air. We could at least store and eat food that we had here. However, most weren’t as lucky. People’s food spoiled in the fridge after a day, and only a few places opened to restock. Also, we were still having high temperatures, so there were not many places to beat the heat. 

Thursday

We were finally able to do regular phone calls, but data was still sporadic. We were able to find out from neighbors and friends that the outage affected over 300,000 customers, and it was the biggest outage in our energy company’s history. There was still no word on when power would be restored. By this point, the internet and cell phone companies kept putting me through the same song and dance since Tuesday. They would say that service had been restored, and then I would later get a text saying that there was still an outage in the area and to expect service back the next day. After talking to the companies several times, I stopped. Considering how bad the damage was to the area, I realized that they probably had no clue how long things would be out for and were trying to keep people calm. 

So what did I end up doing with no internet service last week? I had my Kindle app on my Mac, so I thought I would read a ton of books that I had there. Or so I thought. One thing that I didn’t realize about the Kindle app is that while it automatically adds your purchases to the app, it doesn’t automatically download them to your device. I spent two days trying to download books to keep me company. I ended up reading The Dragon Has Some Complaints by John Wiswell, We Burned So Bright by TJ Klune, Moss’d in Space by Rebecca Thorne, and Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros last week. All were good reads, especially We Burned So Bright. That left me gutted afterwards. I look forward to writing about them in the weeks ahead. 

The one thing that I liked about last week was that I spent hours on end reading. I haven’t done that since I was in high school. It was amazing to not have to fit in time to read, and just settle into the world of the books without a care in the world. I wish that I could read endlessly every day. 

Friday

By Friday, I started to miss the anime that I usually watched. Also, I didn’t like that we didn’t have a reliable way to get news about recovery efforts. It took me hours on my phone to search for a solution to the internet problem since the mobile data was still sporadic by Friday. Looking at several sites, I found something called a USB Wi-Fi that has a cellular data plan. You just plug it into a power source, and you can have internet on up to 10 different devices. I was glad that they still gave me a one-day delivery option.

Saturday

I got the USB Wi-Fi and activated an unlimited one-month plan. It works pretty well for the most part, except for when someone tries to watch a video on one of their devices. Streaming will keep working on one device, but it causes the other devices on the network to buffer. It’s not perfect, but it is able to handle the essentials. 

Aftermath 

Once I got the internet back, I was able to learn more about what exactly happened on August 11th and the following days. My state, Indiana, was hit by a derecho, which is a fast-moving windstorm. It can produce high winds like a hurricane, with a cluster of severe storms following a straight-line path. The derecho stretched over 300 miles from Iowa, through northwest Indiana and into Ohio. Where I live in Indiana, winds were going at 99 mph. 

As of today, there are over 150,000 people without power in the state, including my family. We are very fortunate that my parents and aunt bought the generator last year so that we don’t have to fight for one in stores now since people are getting them in droves. The governor of my state declared a statewide disaster emergency on Friday. The next day, FEMA announced it would provide aid to the state’s recovery efforts.

Citizens have been stepping up during this crisis. Some stores and churches have offered temporary meals for those affected by the storm. People have been posting which gas stations and restaurants are open and which have long wait lines. The gas lines are still long. People have reported lines at gas stations taking anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. My mom and sister had to travel 45 minutes in order to get gas. The city is still trying to get the knocked-down trees and power lines out of the way, but it is taking a lot more time than expected. The energy company had to hire outside help to get people’s power back on as soon as possible. The data on my phone and my main internet services are down. None of them have an ETA for when service will be restored. The energy company that I use did get a timeline for expected restoration of power. They are hoping to have 90% of power restored by August 18, and have 100% restoration of power by August 21.

While people have been generally helpful during this crisis, there are always bad actors who love to amp up all the chaos around them. One person tried to shoot one of the energy company’s service trucks while in my city. Now, the energy company doesn’t want to come back until the state provides police protection while working. This just leaves people more exasperated that a person would jeopardize our access to a power source.

Right now, I think that people want things to go back to normal. However, there is lingering doubt in the air about how long it will take us to get there. I want to thank everyone who kept my family and me in their thoughts and prayers. My surroundings have a lot to improve upon, but I am glad that my family and I are safe and sound with a sturdy roof over our heads. In light of everything that has happened, I am curious if any of you experienced the storm on Tuesday. It seemed like a lot more states were hit than I realized.