Dang! Glad you (and your house) survived the tornado! Lived in rural midwest for about 10 years. One hit the farm-fields on other side of town. It was the lightning that took out the trees that took out the power, though.
Understand. Have spent the last 40 years living with electric outages, and, worse, low voltages, although it's gotten better. Live with a well, now, so the hot water tank (electric) is our emergency water supply. I keep trying to save up for an emergency generator big enough to run well pump and refrigerator, (Not too expensive, in-and-of itself) but that also requires an electrician to reroute power, isolate the generator from the grid, and then get inspected by the power company. A generator big enough to also run water heater adds to cost, as you can imagine. The stove is propane, so can heat a kettle of water. But can't bake pies or cookies. (Sob).
In our first town, the good old American Bald Eagle used to take the blame for most outages - that wide wingspan allegedly spanned the wires and shorted them out. We all thought they just stored one in a freezer and took it out to display it at each newspaper photo of the "culprit".
So that requires money, and life has a way of keeping the bank accounts at zero.
Now THERE is something we can all relate to!
