Wednesday April 27, 2011

I wanted to write down our account of the day for our own memories. We were lucky and had no damage or loss of life but it was a day I will never forget.
After an incredibly beautiful Easter weekend the seven day forecast was calling for storms on Wednesday, severe storms. We were told it was going to be bad. Even the day before, they were forecasting that we were at a very high risk for tornados. I don’t think anyone imagined that it would be this bad.
I made plans the day before to go to my parent’s house to spend the day. Their basement it a little easier to access than ours and I didn’t want to have to ride out the storms with two kids all by myself. Plus we have three HUGE trees towering over our house and I’m not sure they wouldn’t crash through our house and all the way to the basement.
We woke up around 5am to tornado sirens. I immediately woke Ryan up and we turned on the tv. The initial report said that the storm was in the northern part of the county and it didn’t seem like we had anything to worry about except for a thunderstorm passing through. Then our siren went off again and and they mentioned Vestavia was in the path. We got up and woke the kids up and headed down to the basement. The storm was quick but it was loud. We heard a transformer blow but thankfully our power stayed on. When we came upstairs the storm had passed and we couldn’t see any damage. It seemed it had only been a thunderstorm. The sun even started to come out. About 7:00 my brother Heath called and asked if we were okay. Apparently there had been a tornado and it hit Cahaba Heights, a part of Vestavia about 10 minutes away from our house (where Robbie lives and very close to Heath). We later learned that it had also hit parts of Vestavia just down the mountain from our house. Thankfully Robbie and Heath did not have damage but MANY of their friends and neighbors were not so lucky.
At this point the sun was out and it was warming up quickly. The news was reporting that there would be another round of storms coming through that afternoon. Ryan ended up staying home that morning because the roads were so bad he couldn’t get to work and his power was out at work so it would not have done him much damage. We didn’t turn the tv off all day. I decided to stay put since Ryan was going to be home with us. We kept the tv on all day and early afternoon the storms started again just north of Birmingham in Cullman. We watched live, as a tornado tore through Cullman’s downtown. We had already decided to pack up and head over to Ryan’s parent’s house with our neighbors. They have a finished basement and if we were going to have to be in the basement all afternoon and evening then the kids would at least be able to play. So, as the wind picked up here and the sky started to get darker we headed over there. I have to admit I did wonder if when we returned that evening if I would have a house to return to. I was worried mostly about all my photographs. I can replace a house, clothing, and most of our furniture but photographs and videos cannot be replaced. Again, I had no idea of what was going to happen but I had a bad feeling. Thankfully our house and neighborhood went untouched but thousands in Alabama were not so lucky.
When we got to Ryan’s parents it was a zoo. Some other friends were over with their kids so we had 7 kids total 4 of them 2 year olds and one of them a very colicky 7 week old. We didn’t go down to the basement at first. The weather here was still pretty nice out but very windy. At some point we headed to the basement but we still had power and cable. We were of course glued to the tv and in the midst of all the chaos I just remember James Spann (meteorologist on a local news channel) saying that we had a live tornado on their camera in Tuscaloosa. We could not believe what we were seeing. It was huge! As they tracked the storm it was getting closer and closer to Birmingham and was actually headed to downtown and my parents’ house but ended up turning and going a little north of there.
The Mac’s live on the mountain so we were able to see the tornado as it went through Birmingham. We could see it was a massive storm and knew it must have been doing damage but I really don’t think I could have imagined the amount of damage it had done and it wasn’t through.
That seemed to be it for the storms and the kids all needed to get to bed so we headed home. The news stations didn’t show much of the damage that night because there were still storms all over the state most of the evening and they wanted to make sure people had plenty of warning. First thing the next morning we turned on the tv. I could not believe what I was seeing. Ryan was home again on Thursday because there was no power at work. It was an absolutely beautiful day.I could not keep my eyes off of the tv. The images are unbelievable. I found two videos on youtube that show a lot of the damage statewide.

The response in Alabama and around the country has been amazing. It has been incredible to see what social media (Facebook) can do in a situation like this. There are facebook pages for organizing volunteers, collecting food, clothing, diapers, and more. There are pages to collect prom dresses for all the girls who lost their dresses just before their prom night and there are pages to reunite people with their documents and photographs that were sucked up in the tornado and fell from the sky miles away from their homes into other people’s yards. The efforts don’t stop there, collections are being taken up everywhere for storm victims. Ryan was supposed to play in a golf tournament this week but instead they cancelled it and organized for everyone to volunteer for the day in Pratt City, an area in Birmingham hit by a massive tornado.
Again, my family and most of my friends are so very lucky to have made it through that awful day with minor or no damage and no loss of life or injuries but many were not. Please continue to keep them in your thoughts and prayers.