Just as I was getting all nestled into bed last night, a tornado hit my quiet little town.

So I hopped back up and headed to the fire department, where my job was to answer the phones, direct folks to a Red Cross shelter and make sure the guys had coffee and a place to crash.

Rated an F2 on the Fujita scale, the tornado ripped through a six-block area, damaging fifty homes, twenty of which have been deemed uninhabitable.

Our firefighters immediately sized up the situation, called in the off-duty crews and started fighting fires sparked by downed power lines, rescuing folks stuck inside their homes and making the roads passable for medical and emergency crews.

By 10:00 this morning, the worst was behind us and cleanup was well underway.  Luckily, we only had two minor injuries reported during the emergency.  Of course, several hours after order was restored, we started getting those calls that come when people who are used to A/C and tons of water try to chainsaw whole trees out of their front yard in the midday sun.

You can see a Flickr sideshow of damage here.