¡Tornado!

Yesterday during a tremendous thunderstorm a tornado touched down in Barranquilla. This came as quite a surprise since tornadoes are extremely rare in Colombia. The campus of Universidad Reformada and the IPC (where I live) was unharmed, but Colegio Americano (American School), the large elementary/highschool operated by the church, suffered considerable damage. Luckily, no students were on campus, although the same cannot be said of neighboring schools, which received much greater damage and where several children were hurt. Hundreds of Barranquilleros have been left roof-less and flooded.

Information is unclear right now, but we understand that the homes of some of our friends from UR and the Colegio Americano lost their roofs and experienced flooding. Christine and I were invited to visit the site last night but decided to respect the request that only emergency personnel travel in that part of the city. We did take a surreal taxi ride through sections of the city without power on the way to dinner, though. I never thought about how full of life and light Barranquilla is until I saw it dark and quiet at 8:00pm on a Friday night.

If I'm called on to respond to this unexpected situation in any way, I'll post stories here. While this certainly isn't a disaster on the scale of Hurricane Katrina, it has shocked the city and placed an additional burden on people already living complicated lives.

(I lifted this photo from the barranquilla newspaper's website, where you can find more photos and information in spanish.)