In the month of April, I was visiting our hotel in Clinton Mississippi.

On Friday morning, the sales director and I ran an errand and then headed back to the hotel. A big storm hit while we were in the car. We got back to the hotel and started working. Before we knew it, the tornado sirens were going off. Our management team at this hotel did a great job of getting all the hotel guests down in the hallway of the first floor to wait out the storm.
There really was a tornado.

If you watch, you can see a car get picked up in the bottom right of the screen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrkzBpeybkc

Also, the Frog Head Grill makes the video which is about 3/4 mile from our hotel and one of my favorite spots to hit when I'm in town.

It was one long day! We didn't have power for about 8 hours. We were sold out and had to turn away so many guests that needed a place because they had damage at their homes.

We had one couple that checked in. They had a fifth wheel and were driving on the interstate when they saw the storm coming. They exited and went to the Home Depot on the OTHER side of the freeway to take coverage. They parked and went into the building. When the storm was over and they went out to their truck and fifth wheel, they had damage to the fifth wheel. The bank sign from OUR side of the freeway, The sign got caught up in the funnel, flew across the freeway and hit their fifth wheel. Crazy. They stayed with us while they figured out how to get it fixed so they could continue on their trip.

We had one older woman who just sat in our lobby for several hours hoping for a cancellation. Once we got our power back and figured out what our rooms vs reservations looked like, we were able to give her a room that was missing a tv at a deeply discounted rate. She didn't care about the tv - she just wanted power and AC.

The team worked really hard and made it happen - I was quite proud of them.


This car was literally moved by the storm and damaged.
This shows the Hampton's sign which was damaged - the parking lot of the hotel that we manage is directly next to the Hampton's parking lot.
This car was moved by the storm and the back window was blown out - the car was in the Hampton parking lot.
This mobile home park is next to the hotel. The home is on its' side!
This door goes into the hotel's swimming pool which is in a building behind the hotel. We had two doors like this that came off the building during the storm.