Exactly. That may have been a shoddily built Starbucks, or it may have just been unlucky.
I’ve seen tornadoes first-hand and they really are capricious in terms of how they dole out damage. One hit my neighborhood when I was in high school. Our house had a little minor damage, but others nearby were completely destroyed – as in the fire department blocking off the roads until they could shut off the natural gas lines. South of us was a trailer park (yes, all the cliches about trailer parks and tornadoes are true!) where one mobile home was missing, just outright-up-up-and-away-gone, but the ones on the lots to either side didn’t have so much as a broken window.
Tornadoes are just freaking weird. Nothing brings home the random nature of the universe’s indifference to man like one of those twisty motherfuckers. In the aftermath of major storms I’ve seen lots of people describe their survival as a miracle, but I’d rather be lucky than righteous any day of the week.
