I have written many times about the dangers of bad weather when on the road in your RV, but as the pictures with this blog show, you can get into trouble even when parked in a campground.
A tornado tore through the NACO Natchez Trace campground near Hohenwald, Tennessee a few days ago, destroying several RVs and other vehicles, and causing some minor injuries.
Our good friends Rick and Joyce Lang, who are the on-the-road weighing crew for RVSEF, were in the campground and Joyce sent me a link to a photo slideshow she took of the damage. Another reader also sent me several of the pictures included here. Joyce said they were okay, but the fifth wheel next to them was on its roof and had pushed in their bedroom slide. A tree limb also punched through one of the Fantastic vents and they got a lot of water inside. They are staying in a motel until the insurance company sorts through the mess. Joyce said the people in the trailer were not as lucky. They were both transported to the hospital and admitted for treatment.
As these pictures show, no RV is a safe refuge in a tornado or extreme winds. If you are traveling in Tornado Alley and the weather looks threatening, monitor your emergency weather radio, and know where the shelters are in your campground. Our old bus weighs a lot more than most RVs on the road, and we’ve spent time in a campground shelter during tornado warnings, so take a lesson from your old Uncle Nicky and get thyself out of that box on wheels if danger approaches!
We have dodged tornadoes from Texas to Indiana and across the Midwest, and we’ve had some close calls, but we’ve been lucky. We accept that there is a possibility that we could get hit someday, just as we accept the fact that the next trucker coming at us down the highway may fall asleep and cross over into our lane. We plan ahead, we remain alert, but we don’t stop enjoying life because of what “could happen.”
