Hell, Heaven, and Earth In A Week part 1

When I got woke up on April 27,2011 I had no idea what was going on. I remember my mother called about 11 am. I had been up late the night before talking to some police in the Houston, TX area. I was planning on teaching a certification course there in July and some of the training coordinators worked night shift so I had to stay up pretty late to speak with them. It had been a bad night for weather it just seemed to thunder and lightning all night. There was alot of talk of some bad tornadoes but that was nothing new. Now for the people reading this not from Alabama that may seem like a dumb statement and in reality your right. Let me explain and maybe you'll understand the thoughts on people around here on it.
Just to give a point of reference let me put it this way. Tornadoes in the area are as common as a car chase in Los Angeles. They are as common as harvesting corn in Nebraska or getting mugged in New York. Even when there aren't tornadoes we can get huge wind bursts like we did with Hurricane Katrina and Ike. People were really paranoid about them for a long time but over the years just became desensitized. Back in 1974 when I was 6 months old 145 tornadoes hit this area in one night destroying a large chunk of North Alabama as well as other states. My mother still tells stories of them going overhead and shaking the house and her taking me and sitting in the bathtub for shelter because there wasn't a neighborhood shelter here. As the years went by we'd have tornado warnings and they'd panic but the tornadoes never hit here they were always somewhere else where we couldn't see any destruction. Sure we'd see pictures on the news the next day and feel bad for the people but it just isn't the same. After 1974 they built a neighborhood shelter here and we were all standing around outside I was probably around 22 because I remember I still had really long hair and was playing bass guitar in a punk rock band at the time. I still remember looking up in the sky and seeing the clouds blow towards each other and thinking I'd never seen that before. There were so-called spotters out there with radios but they were really just dudes in the neighborhood trying to look important they didn't know anything. They were all like it's gonna miss us it won't be anything. Even when i turned around and saw rain on one side of the neighborhood but not where we where. Even when that rain circled us and went in front of us and starting spinning into a funnel they were like, Aww it's just rain no big deal." They of course were idiots. My hair whipped back as I heard what sounded like a train and we all broke out running. I was the last one down the stairs as the tree behind me snapped...then it was just gone. I heard sirens the trailer park down the road had been hit so we volunteered to look for bodies under the rubble. We didn't see any bodies but there was a casualty a guy had been killed by debri. Two years later I was visiting my parents when we got a tornado warning and the air raid sirens went off at the local nuclear plant. We didn't have time to go anywhere so we just assumed the position in the hall(You know the one we all learn in school). We felt the shaking then everything went dark..then it was gone. I walked outside in the rain and half the roof was gone. So when my mother called me on April 27th and told me there was some tornadoes in the area that morning and more were on the way i took it a little more seriously.
So I got up and walked into the living room and my roommate was already up looking out the window. It was raining like hell I tried to walk out onto the balcony but just got drenched then the power went out. We'd had WiFi for the apartment but it was out with the storm. I still had calls to make to Texas and I needed to renew my car tag as well. Now just so you know we didn't have a portable radio and with the power out we didn't actually know how bad the weather had become. So when there was a break in the rain I made a break for it to the car to go get my car tag. The building was almost empty when i got there but they weren't closed. I walked in and walked right to the front and they were looking at me as if they were angry. They said they were trying to get the hell outta there and asked me what i wanted. I told them and got my car tag pretty quick. Next i had to check my email and the Wifi at the apartment was down. I knew the Sweet Peppers Deli in the Publix Shopping Center had an open WiFi so i went there and sit in my car and got a signal. As soon as I got my emails done and made a couple calls my phone starting going off again. It was my mother saying there was a tornado warning for the area and I needed to get over there to the shelter. I looked around and I had to admit it didn't look too good. It didn't look good at all and I got a weird feeling so I bolted out of the parking lot and headed home I wasn't that far from it I remember seeing how dark it was getting behind me in the rear view mirror so I sped up a little and headed over there.

This was taken from the actual Publix parking lot I was sitting in shortly after i left it

 

When I got to my parents house they still had power and sure enough there was a tornado warning. Mom was panicking trying to get us to the shelter in the back yard and as always my father wasn't listening. Of course none of us knew what i had just missed up in the Publix parking lot either. We all loaded up and grabbed some water and took off to the shelter heading underground. It was raining pretty bad and I let them get in first then followed closing the heavy door behind us and locking it down. It was dark down there plus it was wet and smelled funny and everything echoed. There was a little bit of light coming through the part of the door where oxygen got in but that was about it. My mother had a portable radio and turned it on. That's when we started to get the picture of how bad it really was out there. The local radio station(just down the road from Publix) had taken a direct hit and none of their equipment worked. They were trying to get all of their data off an Ipod and begging people to call in and tell them what was going on out there because they couldn't find out anything either. People were calling in talking about damage which is pretty common but nothing out of the ordinary for these storms. We stayed in the shelter for the most part during the afternoon because as soon as one warning would expire there would be another warning. Honestly it all happened so fast I can't remember the order that everything went down. I know at one point a warning expired and we all went back into the house momentarily just enough time to get more water. When the next warning hit my father refused to go. I didn't want to leave him so I stayed at the door and told my mother I'd look out. At one point I started getting that feeling again and we made a run for it. It was raining so hard I couldn't even see and there was about half a foot of water standing in the back yard. I got so wet out there my mother asked my if I'd fallen down in it but I hadn't the rain poured like a water fall. I think this was about the the time Tornado was going through the Harvest area which wasn't that far from us. This repeated til about 8 pm that night. During the afternoon we found out Brown's Ferry Nuclear Plant had taken a hit in the switch yard and there were a few towers down. Some cables had gotten snapped and the entire city of Huntsville was without power and they didn't know when power would be back. For those that don't know Huntsville is the states third largest city for the entire thing to be out was shocking. This was the epicenter for commerce in the area. With Huntsville completely shut down alot of lives would be shut down with it. This was a huge blow the North Alabama. It was unimaginable. Alot of the places I used to work when I was a technician for Canon had been hit. Cullman and Arab took huge hits with lots of damage. Even our largest city, Birmingham, had been hit hard. Tuscaloosa had a huge amount of damage. As the numbers came in it got worse and worse as the death toll began to climb. I was still drenched and needed some dry clothes even at 8 pm at night when the all clear was finally given. I was totally exhausted mentally and physically but mostly mentally I just wanted to lay down. With all the death and damage I'd had enough for the day. As I said earlier we get tornadoes all the time but it always seems to hit out in rural areas. These tornadoes hit the states first and third largest cities directly. This was unbelievable like some kind of nightmare.I decided to head back to my apartment and see if we'd gotten power back on though I'd heard most of the town was out. I stopped at the Days Inn on the way because I knew they had an open WiFi as well and I needed to check for word from Texas. When I pulled into the parking lot the place was packed and people were out on the ledges it was really odd. I then headed back out driving through town. Some streets were completely dark I could tell there was no power at all on them but when I got to my street I started to see lights. When I got to my apartment there were already other people there playing Xbox. I went in and played with the dog for awhile and spoke with them and just went to bed.
I must've slept about 12 hours because when i woke up the next morning it was 10 am. I decided to go out and see what everything looked like in the day time...it wasn't good. When I hit town it was like something apocalyptic. There were gas lines everywhere you could barely drive. Apparently in the surrounding cities there was no power so the pumps to the gas stations were turned off. Word had got out that Athens had plenty of gas and the locals were afraid people would come from other cities and take it all. You couldn't get gas. You couldn't get into a restaurant most were closed anyway. Even the almighty Wal-Mart was shut down. I managed to find a subway open that only had 4 people in line. Thank God most people in the city hate anything that's healthy. Right behind me in line there was a guy from FEMA that had came up from Georgia that morning about 2 am. The big trailer park down the road had been destroyed and they were clearing out bodies. The highway to Decatur was shut down you could only get there by the interstate. They'd let him leave early because he'd hurt his ankle. Honestly everything was so jacked up it felt like I was in a soup line it was just a bizarre feeling. I made it out to Hwy 72 and got into the gridlock again. By the time I got threw it I thought to hell with this I'm not gonna backtrack through this shit to go to the apartment I'm just gonna go back over to my parents house and see what they are doing. I headed down the country roads but even the old general store down the road from the house was back up for a mile. I worked my way through the traffic and finally got there. They'd went through the same thing in town and said to hell with it and came back home. There was nowhere you could get food nothing was open. We had some sausage left over there so that's what we ate. The tornado was all over national news.
There's had been over 150 tornadoes that night it had even eclipsed the tornadoes in 1974 to become the 2nd worst weather disaster in the nation's history. If I remember right the death toll eventually got close to 300. Most cities were still without power and wouldn't have it for days. President Obama had cancelled some meetings and was coming to the state on Friday. Until then We were declared a Federal Disaster Zone and FEMA would be moving in taking a bigger role. We got more and more info all day as we sat there and watched the video coming in from some of the carnage. All we could do was sit there and watch it everything was shut down. Then as it got into the evening there was word there would be a dusk til dawn curfew. It was getting close to dusk so I got into the car to head home. I'd heard during the day that the city of Hartselle had gotten hit too and I had a friend there so I called to see if he was doing ok.
When I got him on the phone he wasn't even in Hartselle he was in Pensacola,FL. See we were supposed to go down there before all this started but he'd had to get his daughter from down there and bring her up here for a doctor's appointment. Well when he heard about the storms coming he said screw it and just stayed down there. I was complaining about how everything was and how bad everything looked. He told me he had a free room down there with an extra bed that I should just say screw it and drive down there. I was going to be at least a 6 hour drive and I only had half a tank of gas and nowhere that I could by any. I'd never unpacked my suitcase from when we were gonna go earlier it was still in the back seat. I felt like If my Honda Civic would make it past Birmingham that I'd be able to get gas and make it to Florida. Birmingham was basically 90 miles away. Just passed Birmingham the disaster zone ended with the exception of Tuscaloosa and I felt like I could get gas easy there but didn't know for sure. Either way there was nothing for me here and I still couldn't get internet access to do my work in Texas. Hondas are supposed to get great gas mileage and I'd decided I was gonna find out how good. I got to the apartment and grabbed a few things,played with the dog, and hit the road. I didn't know if I was gonna make it I may sleep in my car but I'm going for it.