the streets of Tuscaloosa: my April 27th story

My April 27th story is no where near as graphic/exciting/dangerous as the ones who lived it.  I felt like I needed to share as to not forget the ones who experienced and continue to experience the aftermath.

April 27, 2011 will forever be etched in my brain just like September 11, 2001.  However, there was no attack to our nation on our soil, but mother nature destroyed thousands of lives along with killing a few hundred across my state.  Let me start at the beginning...

Close to a week before the 27th, our area meteorologists had warned of the weather severity on that day.  Friday, April 15th had been a bad enough day for Alabama already.  Luckily I was at the beach that day when a handful of tornadoes swept across the state.  On the evening of the 26th, Daniel warned me of how bad the weather might be the following day.  He was watching the nightly news when the meteorologist was talking about the next day's forecast and just how bad it would get.  He had never seen the weather read anything like that before and cautioned all viewers to be prepared for the next day's weather.  Two rounds were headed this way....

Daniel and I were woken up between 5-5:15AM by the hollowing of wind and rain the next morning.  We turned on the tv to see there were possible tornadoes/straight-line winds just minutes north of our house.  Thankfully we dodged the bullet even though it sounded terrible outside.  On the way to work (in Tuscaloosa), I noticed every other tree was snapped along I-20/59.  When I reached the Mercedes plant, there was at least a dozen trees down laying across the interstate.  Multiple trees were down in the median along with light poles.  I didn't realize just how bad straight-line winds could be.

As the day progressed, I watched footage of James Spann on UStream.  I saw the Cullman tornado touchdown and decided it was time for me to leave.  I gathered my stuff to leave at 2:30 and this and that started to come up.  At 3:10, I finally told my boss, Jolly, that I was leaving.  The winds were really picking up and I needed to get home.  He joked around saying that it was going to be fine and gave me a hard time for leaving.  I told him that I wasn't going to stick around to find out. 

It wasn't long after I got home when a couple of tornadoes made their way towards Tuscaloosa.  Then we saw it.  James Spann was freaking out.  I was praying that no one was still at the plant.  The biggest tornado I have ever seen started ripping its way down 35th Street (where I work).  All we could do was watch in awe as the mile wide twister created complete havoc through Tuscaloosa.  I began pacing and hoping that Jolly didn't have a team there still working.  I texted him to make sure everyone was fine.  It wasn't for another couple of hours before I got a repsonse that all was okay.  I had no idea what that meant until I got a call from my co-worker, Greg, later that evening.  Our plant suffered damage:  a few buildings were gone along with our fence.  Debris was everywhere.  Considering that Waste Management across the street from us was completely destroyed and every business up the street from us was nothing but rubble, we were pretty lucky.

I later found out that Jolly along with another man were still at the office when the tornado traveled behind our plant and office building.  He says that he immediately felt the pressure and his ears popped.  He ran to the back and looked at the window.  And he saw it.  He saw the debris and felt the concrete office building shaking.  Then it passed.  Businesses just blocks up the street from our workplace were completely destroyed.  I didn't make it back down to Tuscaloosa until Friday (2 days after the tornadoes hit).  The damage was unlike anything I had ever seen.  Skeletons of buildings were still standing along with pencil trees.  There was no way to find landmarks or to even know where you were standing in the middle of the destruction. 

A few weeks later I drove through the main part of Tuscaloosa that was hardest hit (but who's to say that everywhere in Tuscaloosa wasn't hardest hit?  Devastation was everywhere.).  I drove down 15th Street (aka University) to the intersection of McFarland.  There was nothing.  Nothing but debris and damage.  Debris and damage everywhere.  Those poor people who experienced the wrath of the tornado.  I can't even imagine living through or dying in a tornado of that magnitude. 

Tornados have a different meaning to me now.  Don't get me wrong I was always terrified of their possibilities.  I guess growing up I always knew that their destruction could reach unfathomable levels of destruction, but I never knew just how bad until I drove through the streets of Tuscaloosa.