Twisted: A Minneapolis Tornado Memoir

By Marie Porter and Michael Porter

After a morning spent running errands for their new home, Marie and Michael Porter's lives were turned upside down -along with the lives of thousands of others. On the afternoon of May 22, 2011, North Minneapolis was devastated by a tornado

Twisted recounts the Porters' first 11 months, post tornado. Rebuilding their house, working around the challenges presented by inadequate insurance coverage. Frustration at repeated bouts of incompetence and greed from their city officials. Dealing with issues such as loss of control, logistics, change, and over-stimulation, as two adults with Aspergers.

With the help of social media -- and the incredibly generous support of the geek community -- the Porters were able to emerge from the recovery marathon without too much of a hit to their sanity levels. New friends were made, new skills learned, and a "new" house emerged from the destruction. Twisted is a roller coaster of emotion, personal observations, rants, humor, social commentary, set backs and triumphs.

Subjects covered include: Opportunistic "Vultures", gawkers, new friendships, a bizarre gingerbread house, unique decisions made with the rebuild - including an internet-famous kitchen backsplash, "Tornado Claus", contractor drama, water balloons, DIY design and work, music, sensory overload, and details on how to cook jambalaya for almost 300 people, in the parking lot of a funeral home... should you ever find yourself in the position to do so!

"Twisted" also includes many Twitter "tweets" from along the way - real time thoughts and feelings on the whole ordeal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9780984604081

Book preview

safe!"

Our New Beginning

Racing towards our Minneapolis home, I'd never been so scared in my life.

Normally, I'd consider myself to be calm under stress… maybe even thrive on it. When having conversations that no couple should ever have to have, as our world was coming down around us though? Not so much. On May 22, 2011 our lives changed. Violently.

A few months earlier, we'd been renting-to-own a home in a nearby suburb. The rent was crippling us, and it was impossible to save up for a down payment. It was a world of hurt for us, but we loved the house, and tried to stick it out.

When the foreclosed house next door sold for 1/3 of what we were contracted to pay, though... we decided to look into buying a foreclosed home.

I still laugh when I think about how lucky we were, in buying this new house. Within minutes of finding out the selling price of the neighbor's house, we were scanning listings online.

I came upon one listing that grabbed my attention. To this day, I don't know what it was that caused me to take notice. It was a fairly average older house, one of many in our price range. The exterior was not the nicest color, but the inside looked ok. There wasn't a ton of room... there wasn't any real particular advantage to this house at all.

Instinct is a funny thing. I just had a feeling that THIS was our house. We wanted to see it right away, super excited about the possibility of owning our own home. So, just after 8pm that night, we drove out to look at it, in the dark.

It was a house. It was dark, and completely in snow. Just a regular old house, nothing really spectacular... but I was still feeling like this was the one. I arranged to meet a realtor at the house the next day.

Honestly, the tour almost ended immediately. The kitchen was awful - seriously the worst kitchen I'd ever seen in my life. It was tiny, had awful cabinetry up one side, a weird, super tall sink unit (that was very trashy looking), and it was shaped like a ... stealth bomber.

I felt sort of guilty about wasting the realtor's time, so I toured the rest of the house. The two bedrooms on the main floor would make great offices for us. The bathroom was awful, though. The living and dining rooms had gorgeous dark wood trim, but the walls were in crappy shape.

I headed up the stairs to the converted attic, which was the main bedroom. Huh. Some moron had sprayed popcorn finish all over the walls and ceiling, and then painted it an ugly yellow color. Never seen anything like THAT before!

From the top of the stairs, I scanned the room, with its unfinished floor. That amount of space would be nice... I could picture hanging out on the mini deck on the other side of a patio door... I think I was trying to convince myself that my initial instinct wasn't horribly wrong.

Then I noticed a weird little alcove off the far end of the room, behind the stairs. Unlike the bizarre yellow popcorn walls, it was nicely finished in cedar. It looked new... what the hell? Was that a .. THERE IS A JACUZZI IN THE BEDROOM? Maybe I'm simple, but the idea of buying a house for $45k, that had a Jacuzzi alcove in the bedroom? That's enough reason to make everything else work. I have NO idea why that Jacuzzi was neither mentioned nor photographed in any of the real estate listings for the house, but I loved it.

I had my husband drop what he was doing at work, and come view the house.

On first glance, he thought it was a cute older house, and immediately fell in love with the woodwork. Aside from the gorgeous dark wood trim that I loved, the hardwood floors throughout were in excellent condition, and the doors were all solid wood.

He's a handy guy, so started looking for potential deal breakers. He checked out the foundation, looked for any sort of major repairs that would be needed. Not as concerned about the cosmetic issues, he wanted to ensure we were buying a sound home.

Having already researched the crime statistics that morning - North Minneapolis having a reputation as a bit of a bad neighborhood - he gave his seal of approval, and we put in an offer immediately. One month later, the house was OURS.

For him, the bedroom was a huge selling point. While his calculations on crime and population density had us facing the average of getting broken in to once every 5 years, he loved the idea of the bedroom as an oasis. No matter what may be going on outside, this would be our fortress of solitude, vaulted above the street below.

We hired dry wallers and painters to come in and fix the place up. The popcorn finish was scraped from the bedroom wall and all of the ceilings, with knock down texture added. New carpet was installed in the bedroom. The walls on the main floor were repaired and painted. I made custom curtains for the entire house. Aside from the kitchen and bathroom, the interior of the house was gorgeous when we moved in, in March 2011.

For budget and scope reasons, we decided to wait until the summer to start discussing what we were going to have to do in the kitchen and bathroom. They just required too much work, to try and wrap our heads around at the time. With the rest of the house done so beautifully, though... we could wait.

We were so very happy with our purchase, and with the work that had been done so far. This house was our freedom! It was the end to paying exorbitant amounts of rent, with no long term gain from it. It was OURS, and we loved it.

That's not to say that it was perfect, of course. With our new purchase came a list of things that the city wanted us to do to renovate it. Most items were small… replace the outlet covers, put a new railing on the stairs to the basement. The big, labor intensive, and expensive to-do was to add railings to our sizeable deck, which would have to wait until the snow melted.

We had plenty to keep us occupied for the next 3 months. The decision to move, home purchase, and actual move had all happened so fast, nothing had been properly packed. We picked away at unpacking the many boxes, and trying to get things where they were supposed to be.

We tackled some of the interior fixes that needed to be done. We brewed up a few batches of wine in our new brew room. We thoroughly enjoyed our new oasis bedroom... soaking in the Jacuzzi, watching movies, and snuggling with our 4 cats. Life was good!

As spring arrived, the melting snow provided us with another unexpected surprise from the house.

Carrying groceries in from the car, I noticed an ugly, wrinkled little mass on the ground. I wasn't sure what it was, but damn - there were quite a few of them. I was hoping that it wasn't some sort of weird fungus, when I saw that one of them was cracked open. It looked like... yes, it was a walnut. A walnut!

I can't even tell you how excited I was to find out that the huge, gorgeous old tree in our back yard was a black walnut tree. I'd never had a walnut tree before, but I'd heard of other people locally who owned them - and I was a little jealous.

The discovery sent me into a flurry of research. What do you do with the walnuts? How do you shell them, dry them... what would I make with them? The ideas flew. I'd actually just read an article about making Nocino liqueur, and Italian walnut liqueur.

In addition to the happiness that the find brought me, it also brought a bit of negative information. I learned that black walnut trees render the soil beneath them - for a large radius - toxic. Not many plants would grow in our back yard, as a result.

Oh well, I thought. We may not be able to have a garden out there like we'd hoped, but we had WALNUTS! I was so very excited for the possibilities.

As the end of May - and our repair deadlines - approached, we planned for the completion of the deck railings. We did the math, selected the necessary wood and hardware, and placed an order for everything we needed. My husband cleared some room in the garage - which was impassable, with unpacked boxes from our move. I worked on unpacking my office, to allow for us to bring in the final piece of my matched set of office furniture, a shiny purple hardwood credenza.

Knowing we'd need to rent a truck to haul the wood, I juggled logistics to handle a few other errands at the same time, maximizing that investment. I'm a logistics person, and when May 22nd came around, we were prepared with a game plan. It was going to be a long day of hard work, but I'd choreographed the day beautifully, and we were READY for the day.

As it was to be a long day, we rented our moving truck early.

Sweaty, covered in water and dirt, hauling decking at Menards. #HomeOwnership #DamnItFeelsGoodToBeAGangster #YesISaidSterNotSta - Twitter, Sun May 22 15:40:53 UTC

We first picked up the lumber, then headed to the city impound lot, for a tree - something we had been looking forward to for a few months. The city had a tree trust program, where residents could purchase a tree of their choice for just $25. We'd chosen to pick up a Honey Crisp apple tree, and were looking forward to the addition to our backyard. A walnut tree AND an apple tree! Think of the possibilities!

The next stop was to visit our former home, to move the remaining items from the garage and shed. As one of the items was a large, heavy commercial Hobart mixer, the moving truck would come in handy.

It was miserable work that morning. It was hot and humid in the morning, which had made pulling the lumber order a sweaty and arduous task. By the time we got to the impound lot for our new tree, the sky had darkened and was starting to drizzle. We picked a 10' tall apple tree that was in full bloom, and scrambled back into the truck to avoid the weather.

As we arrived at our former home, the sky had opened up completely, and was pouring rain. We trudged through the mud and water puddles to collect the last few pieces of yard equipment, our grill, and garden tools.

Soaked to the bone, we dropped my mixer off at my father in law's house, where we would have to store in until we could find a buyer. After chatting a while, we headed home, to unload the tree, the lumber, and the last of the items from our former house.

Back in the moving van, heading towards the rental agency, we patted ourselves on the back for a good job done. We had busted our asses, and managed to finish the entire list of tasks early! Exhausted but happy, we decided to grab some lunch, and then spend the rest of the day alternating between watching movies and soaking in the Jacuzzi. Not only did our sore muscles need the rest and soaking, we figured we'd earned the rest of the day to relax. With all of the moving, unpacking, and renovating leading up to that day, the idea of an afternoon off was deliciously indulgent.

We returned the truck, and went to a nearby Arby's for lunch. It felt good to get off our feet, it was such a relief to be done for the day, and we happily discussed movie options for the afternoon.

It was raining pretty hard by then, so we talked about opening the curtain above the Jacuzzi, laying back and watching the rain through the skylight above. Maybe there'd be lightning to watch... oh, it all sounded so relaxing and blissful.

... and then the sirens went off.

Running in to Hell

From that initial air raid siren incident, I never did acclimatize to the whole idea of tornadoes, or weather sirens. Rather than getting better over time, things had managed to get worse. On two occasions in the weeks leading up to May 22, we'd been out driving when tornado sirens went off. Rather than We've never seen one, or Nothing has happened!, my mind processed it as we're going to get it, sooner or later, and every false alarm was just hurling us closer to ... whatever vague idea I had about what it would be like to encounter a tornado. I was terrified.

The anxiety I'd started developing about tornadoes had reached a point where I could NOT handle being away from the house, out in the open, with sirens going off. We packed up the remains of our meal and headed home, where I would feel safe.

It had gone almost black outside at that point, despite being the early afternoon. The rain was sheeting down like I'd never seen before - not in that tropical storm in New Orleans, not in several years living on the east coast. Visibility was pretty much zero.

We had only driven a block or two when my phone rang. The rain was so loud, I could barely make out what the caller was saying. It took a few tries before I finally made it out - she was calling from the alarm company, our system was reporting that there was a fire in our basement.

A fire. Something I've never had to deal with. My mind raced - the cats. I didn't even consider property damage, I was so focused on getting the cats out safely. We didn't yet know our neighbors, and no one had a key to our house. The fire department had been called, and we raced to get home.

While my husband took some small degree of comfort in It's a basement fire, we should have a half hour buffer to save them!, I tried to calm and distract myself by posting a few quick blurbs to my twitter account.

Omg!!! Trying to get home through this monster storm, just got a call that our fire alarm is going off! SO SCARED for the cats. - Twitter, Sun May 22 19:21:36 UTC

I've never had to deal with a fire. I am freaking out from the tornado sirens, everyone is driving like an idiot and I am scared for cats - Twitter, Sun May 22 19:30:52 UTC

The weather was not helping. The rain had somehow managed to get worse, the roads were flooding, and everyone was driving like maniacs. Looking back, maybe they'd received similar calls? I couldn't even think straight, all we knew was that we had to get home fast. What would normally be a 20 minute drive home felt like an eternity.

I called the alarm company back almost as soon as I'd hung up. In our hysteria, we'd forgotten to mention that we have a keyless door, and could provide the code. The operator would relay the information to the fire department.

Within a few minutes, they called back with some horrifying information - the roads were impassable, the fire department would not be coming, we were on our own.

I still have no idea how we made it home safely. We weren't driving safely, and the conversation we were having.. No one should ever have to have that conversation. It was a mix of steeling ourselves for what we would be coming home to, formulating a plan to get the cats out, and trying to figure out what items, if any, we'd need to save in order to rebuild our lives. We had no idea how bad the fire was, what we'd be coming home to. I'd certainly never been in a position to run into a burning building for ANY reason, much less to find 4 animals that were likely VERY scared, who were good at hiding.

About a mile from our house, we were stopped by a roadblock. We turned north, and encountered a tree across the road. We turned down another street, and there was another tree in the way. It was all very surreal. Loads of HUGE trees, uprooted like they were mere weeds. I was hyperventilating, Porter was trying to calm me down, and it seemed like a nightmare. I've never been so scared and upset in my life. Every new street we tried to turn down, there were massive trees blocking the road. I've never seen anything like it in my life.

After navigating the new maze for what seemed like hours, we managed to get about 3 blocks from our home. We got out, and sprinted in the general direction of our house, completely disoriented by the chaos around us.

Trees everywhere.

A roof on the street. Garages smashed in, people everywhere, being careful to avoid the masses of downed power lines. All we could think of was our cats, and the fire that had been reported. I've never been so scared in my life.

Between leaving the car and arriving at the house, the memories are fuzzy. Both Porter and I agree that we came out of the back alley across from our house, cutting through someone's yard - but neither one of us remember actually entering the alley, or any part or running through the alley. SO bizarre, how we're both missing the same few minutes of memory - I wonder if we'll ever get them back? I remember running through that yard, and past the people who lived there, who were visibly stunned at everything around us. I remember apologizing for cutting through their yard, which - in hindsight - must have seemed completely ridiculous.

The Obstacle Course to Get Home

When we finally got to the house, there was no immediate evidence of a fire. As Porter ran to the basement to check for a fire, I started to search for the cats.

We were so scared for them. We were calling for them, and there was no response from any of them. We have incredibly vocal cats, they respond to their names... hell, most of them even come when called.

After a quick search through the house, we started a second, more detailed pass. We looked everywhere, pulling debris and unpacked boxes aside. Porter started to look for blood, I was trying to figure out if they could have gotten out.

While there had been no fire, we was plenty of other damage. There were trees sticking in our 2nd floor bedroom wall, we had to duck under a toppled tree to get in our front door… another of the trees in the front yard was leaning on our neighbor's house, ripped right out of the ground.

It was impossible to get to our back yard. Both sides of our yard were completely impassible, having been filled more than waist deep random debris, just packed in there - trees, fencing, roofing, part of someone's deck... the railings from the neighbor's upper deck ...

Reaching the back yard through the house wasn't any better. The small porch just outside of the kitchen had been smashed in, with broken glass and branches everywhere.

Our black walnut tree had broken off - so I thought - and had smashed in our deck, and was leaning against our house. It wouldn't be til days later that I'd find out that the tree - over 100 years old - had actually been ripped from the ground, landed on one part of our roof (smashing it in), and BOUNCED off to land on another section. I can't even imagine...

I remember looking out over all that destruction, how impassable it all was, and thinking that if the cats had gotten out of the house, we would NEVER be able to find them.

It took an hour or so, but we did eventually find all of the cats.

We had NO idea what to do, so we were putting them in the bathroom as we found them. The scope and gravity of the situation hadn't even begun to process.

We found Jame - The Princess in the front entryway, crammed between the side of the couch, and a wall. I set her up with food and cat litter in the bathroom, and then just lost it. I'd done a once-over of the house, and just couldn't handle it. I sat on the front steps and just... screamed. Completely useless, completely inconsolable. I started learning right then - though it wasn't something I'd ever considered before, Aspergers and tornadoes just do NOT mix.

My husband was more functional than I was at the moment, and continued to look for the cats while I had my meltdown. Somehow, Tweak - The Fatass - had managed to cram himself under the couch. I have no idea how he managed it. This is a BIG cat, and there is not much clearance under that couch - he must have just dove under there.

Some time after Tweak was safely sequestered in the bathroom, Rat - The Ninja came strolling out from nowhere, all nonchalant. Very Hey dad, what's up?. Into the bathroom with her, as we tried to find Turbo - The Baby. Turbo was only about 6 months old, and it wasn't looking good. We combed over areas we'd already searched, and finally found her under my office desk, hidden behind all of the moving boxes that ended up in and around the desk.

With the cats - all shaken up, but otherwise ok and uninjured - safely in the bathroom, we finally surveyed the damage. It's so weird how we could be searching the house for the cats, but not actually process what had happened around us. Not fully.

I had been vaguely aware of water in the kitchen while searching, but it hadn't stuck out as a glaring abnormality. With the cats safely sequestered... wow. The kitchen ceiling had been smashed in, water was pouring in, and the kitchen floor was sort of caving in, in the middle. There was water everywhere. We hadn't done the dishes before leaving that morning, and there was a cookie sheet of baked goods sitting on the stove... ALL sopping wet now.

Looking out to the backyard... it just looked like a land fill. The yard had just been filled up with crap from everywhere, along with our tree. Trees, roof materials... a lot of random crap. Plant matter was plastered against the house like it had been sprayed on as a finishing texture.

Upstairs, there was a crack along the walls/ceiling seam, all along the south end of the house. The tornado had ripped the roof up and dropped it back down.

The patio door had been completely smashed in, its glass scattered all across our brand new carpet. The mini deck was full of tree branches and random debris.

To the left of the patio door - right at the top of the stairs - a tree had pierced the wall. It had entered in a downward trajectory, coming to rest in the cat litter box. That it landed in the litter box like that? It made a hilarious photograph, and it likely saved our hardwood floor up there... but at the time, it was a scary sight. No one should ever have to see a tree - probably 5" in diameter! - sticking in their wall like that. I hope the cats were nowhere near their litter box when it happened!

Cats are all ok. The house is not. There is a tree in our bedroom. Likely a write off. Our new house. Devastation is incomprehensible - Twitter, Sun May 22 22:02:31 UTC

We were suddenly aware of how weird everything felt - not even so much the visuals, but the complete lack of noise. There were no birds chirping. Without electricity, neither our air conditioner - nor anyone else's- was running. All of the minute noise pollution that we never even notice was just non existent. My husband likened it to being at a loud nightclub with music, having it all get shut off instantly, and everyone just quiet in shock. On top of that, it had gotten very humid.

I felt like the walls - and all this destruction - were closing in on me. Suddenly, our oasis felt very claustrophobic. I had to get out. I went back out to the front steps for some fresh air, and finally got a clear look at my surroundings

Outside, I realized that I was crying and shaking. I thought I was going to have a total nervous breakdown. I looked out over my street, and it was just… surreal. It was like something out of a disaster movie, but so much worse. Our street had been completely canopied by many VERY old trees, they were now almost all flattened. Ripped out of the ground, roots and all, like they were NOTHING.

Picture that for a moment. Completely open sky. Not only did many houses get their roofs damaged / torn off, the whole neighborhood lost its roof.

I noticed that my beloved car was hidden under a large tree that had landed on it... and it was far from alone in that sense. Every car on the street - and probably for blocks around - were destroyed. A car across the street had a large section of tree sticking out of its windshield, many were just flattened.

There were trees in the streets, trees blocking the sidewalks, and trees laying on top of houses. 3 houses down, one tree had landed on another, inverted. Truly bizarre sight! There were power lines everywhere, garages flattened - at least one garage was just no longer there. Just gone! There were distraught people were EVERYWHERE, wandering around in shock. No one knew what to do.

At this point, fight or flight was starting to kick in. Unfortunately, it manifested as flight for me, and fight for my husband.

I just wanted to get the hell out of there, get away from the chaos, and be able to think. I couldn't THINK with all of this destruction around me. I'd never been exposed to such a disaster before, I had NO experience to draw on - not even tangentially, from knowing anyone who'd gone through it - and it all seemed so... catastrophic. There were so many issues to consider, and so many things that would need to be dealt with right away - I couldn't even wrap my head around it. I'm a planner. With decent conditions, I can think/plan my way around anything, and I was confident that a temporary change of venue would be the best for us.

My husband, on the other hand, had other ideas.

Porter described it as him being more like a horse. A horse will apparently run back into a burning barn, seeing it as its safe place, even when surrounded by imminent danger like that. The house was my husband's comfort area, and where he wanted to be. He's a fixer, and wanted to start cleaning up and getting back to normal.

Security was also a concern in his mind. Any area devastated by a natural disaster is a prime target for looting. Even before news channels were reporting looting in the area, he was feeling the stay and protect my house urge.

Looting and protection of our stuff was the furthest thing from my mind, as I was more fixated on basic needs. We obviously would not be staying in our house that night, nor for a long time to come. Hell, I didn't even know if the house was safe to BE in, much less live in!

We needed to get the cats situated somewhere, we needed a game plan. We needed to figure out where we would be retiring that evening, when all was said and done.

As reasonable as both sides sound on paper, we didn't handle it reasonably. We stood in our livingroom, making vaguely coherent arguments while screaming, crying. I was in hysterics. He was mad