Andover family displaced by tornado isn’t home for the holidays but still is grateful

Home for the holidays is taking on new meaning this year for the Triplett family, whose Andover home was hit by the tornado that struck their Reflection Lake neighborhood on April 29.

For most of the time since then, they’ve been living at the nonprofit Carpenter Place in Wichita. Mark Triplett, a financial planner, consults on financial plans for the home for teenage girls, and his church, Northside Church of Christ, supports the home as well.

“It’s been like a new home for us the last eight months,” Triplett said. “It’s been a great blessing . . . but we’re anxious to get back to our house.”

He and his wife, Lindsay, and their four daughters — Madison, 15; Sydney, 13; Paige, 10; and AvaLane, 6 — are living in what’s known as Carpenter’s cottage along with their almost 2-year-old black Lab, Baxter.

The adventure has had its highs and lows.

The girls have met new friends at Carpenter Place, but their father noted they have to get up earlier these days to make the 20-minute drive back to Andover for school.

“It’s 25, actually,” Sydney corrected him.

Madison has been doing a lot of the driving.

“She’s gotten great learner’s permit experience,” her mother said.

Triplett now has a short drive to his Wichita office.

“Basically, my wife and I flip-flopped our drive time.”

The Tripletts have to keep their cars in the driveway of their temporary home because the garage is stuffed with everything they could salvage from their real home in the days immediately following the tornado.

“We did not lose everything,” Lindsay Triplett said. “We were just very lucky.”

Still, this home away from home has been an adjustment.

“It feels like you’re just visiting,” Lindsay Triplett said.

Her husband describes it “like you’re living out of somebody else’s house.”

“It kind of feels like you’re ready to go back home from vacation. We’re still just in that waiting mode.”

Triplett said he doesn’t mean to sound ungrateful in any way, because Carpenter Place has been especially giving.

“It’s been a blessing just to have a place to call home even though it doesn’t . . . feel like home,” he said. “Especially now with the holidays we’re, I don’t know, we’re ready to get back home and . . . to have our own space.”

‘There’s a funnel’

The first sign that that Friday night in April was going to be like none other was when Paige’s soccer game was called short due to lightning in the area.

After Mark Triplett picked up some Mexican food for dinner and his wife and Sydney made a run to the grocery store, they — along with his sister and brother-in-law, who were visiting for the soccer game — settled in to eat and watch “Nailed It!”

“The news wasn’t popping on or anything really telling us to take cover,” Mark Triplett said.

Then, emergency phone alerts all started going off at once.

Lindsay Triplett advised her sister-in-law to take the girls downstairs and take cover after moving items from under the stairs.

“Then Mark was by the front door, and he goes, ‘I think the sirens are going off,’ ” Lindsay Triplett said. “So he opened the front door, and he goes, ‘There’s a funnel.’ ”

Then, she did what a lot of Kansans would: Triplett grabbed her phone, ran out and shot a picture before saying, “We’ve got to move.”

As everyone crammed under the stairs, the electricity went off.

“So I thought, oh great, that’s not good, but I’m still not worried about getting hit.”

She just had closed some doors to guard against glass in case windows blew out, and Triplett was making her way back to her family when a feeling struck.

“I looked at all of them, and I’m like, ‘Do you guys feel that?’ My ears hurt so bad.”

She describes it as similar to ear pain from pressure on an airplane but more intense.

“I felt a waving motion through my body and in my ears, and I really think it was our roof starting to give.”

Then a large mirror crashed down the stairs, sending shattered glass and wood flying.

“I think we got some more tears going then,” Lindsay Triplett said. “It was unreal.”

Paige held her aunt’s arm so hard she left a bruise.

When it was over and Mark Triplett got up to investigate, his wife attempted to soothe everyone.

“We’re all OK. Everything is fine no matter what we see.”

A few of them reported feeling a breeze where they were sitting.

Sure enough, her husband looked and said, “We don’t have a roof.”

‘First family home’

As surreal as the Tripletts say it was to see the rope funnel, the moments after the tornado were almost harder to comprehend. Like seeing the kitchen cabinets had vanished but realizing that eggs fresh from the store sat unharmed on a kitchen counter.

“It was just kind of crazy what it picked up and what it didn’t,” Mark Triplett said.

Smoke detectors throughout the neighborhood were going off, and there was a hiss of gas.

Mostly, though, Triplett said, one minute you’re in your house, “and then the next you don’t have a house.”

There was an outpouring of help, and within a week everything was demolished down to the studs and prepared to be rebuilt.

There was no question of rebuilding.

“It was our first family home,” Mark Triplett said.

A number of issues, such as the supply chain and the housing market, contributed to delays. There was a lot of hurrying up and waiting.

“It wasn’t the greatest time to be building a house,” Triplett said.

Theirs progressed faster than a lot of other houses with the help of a contractor friend from church.

Thanksgiving was the first targeted move-in date. Now, the Tripletts hope to be in by late January.

“It certainly wasn’t the way we wanted to renovate the house or get all new stuff, but it’ll be a blessing in and of itself when we get back in,” Mark Triplett said. “God has a way of providing.”

Even with some of the delays, he said, he saw how things worked to the family’s benefit.

“God’s timing is . . . good.”

There have been some unexpected joys, too.

Though the family lost most of its Christmas decorations when the tornado sucked them out of the attic, some neighbors brought over a small shoe box of ornaments they found that had landed at their house.

A friend of Lindsay Triplett’s messaged her on Facebook about something her family found in their backyard, which was between a half mile and a mile away.

It turned out to be a snowman ornament with Madison’s name on it that her grandparents had given to her.

“Just out of all the places, that was pretty insane to land in my friend’s backyard,” Lindsay Triplett said.

“And it didn’t break,” her husband said. “That’s crazy.”

So, while Sydney said this Christmas is “just different . . . since we’re living somewhere else,” there is much to be grateful for.

As the family gathered for a photo and to share their story, Lindsay Triplett wore a “Thankful” T-shirt.

“We bought it to support Carpenter a few years ago,” she said.

“ ‘Thankful.’ And we’re thankful for them.”

This story was originally published December 25, 2022 at 5:32 AM.