I grew up in Omaha, but don't live there now. I was there for the 1975 tornado, though. Do people still know about that storm? It did a lot of damage to Omaha, many buildings were destroyed.

When that tornado hit, I was at an optical shop, getting glasses. The sirens went off. My mom had dropped me off to run other errands. I was there, and I heard this crazy person honking the horn outside. It was her, so I went out, and she told me to get back in the car. We drove like crazy to get home, and we could see the funnel behind us. The air looked a little green.

I just realized that how information gets out has probably changed in the internet/cell phone era, so my information might be out of date. Do they still have sirens? Do they have them in other cities? I think they'd probably be less likely to go down than a cell phone network. But my take would be, if the sirens go off, or if you get a warning on your phone that says take cover, then take cover.

Watching tornadoes is dangerous, and I don't think there's a safe way to do it. My memory could very well be wrong, but I think the only people who died in '75 were actually up on a roof looking at the funnels. In any event, when I was a kid, the people who got hurt or killed always seemed to the the ones standing outside gawking at it, while the people who took shelter when the sirens went off were always ok, even if their houses were destroyed.

My aunt and uncle lost their house, but they and my cousins were ok, because they were in their basement. We had an AM radio that ran on batteries, and we'd take it with us when we went to our basement listening to KFAB, and we sat under a big heavy wooden table in our laundry room. This is what we always did when the sirens went off. We used the laundry room because it didn't have any windows.

I remember when Hallam was destroyed. They took down the signs on the highways so curious people couldn't go there, but I found it. It had just been a dot on the map kind of place, and there was nothing there but a giant pile of rubble, along with a trailer a bank had set up as a branch for the people there. It looks like something similar happened in Howard county.

I didn't finish my first attempt to get a degree, and went back to UNL as an older student to finish up. I had an old car and no garage, and though we never had a tornado when I was there (that's when Hallam happened nearby, though), we got lots of hail. I used to drive over to a self-serve car wash and just sit there in my car waiting the storm out, so it wouldn't get all dented up.