http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150602172475457&set=o.162443980482277
This one kills me. I’m from Tuscaloosa, and only just moved away last October. My apartment is immediately behind this shopping center and was in the exact direct path of the tornado. I’ve been glued to my computer since Wednesday, searching for any and all photos/videos I can find. It kills me that I can’t afford to fly home and see the damage or help.
There are lots of people, from Alabama and surrounding states, who are helping, Rex. I wish I could go but I think I’d be in the way. I’m sending $ which is welcome too. 
Please spread the word about the found documents/pictures site which is trying to get these mementoes back to Alabama and Mississippi families. Look through the pictures if you have time and see if you know any Tuscaloosans.
ETA: Oops, I see you have already posted in that thread. Sorry about that.
My sister is in Tennessee. She hid out in the basement with my nephew and her boyfriend. A tree came through her roof. Her vegetable garden is gone, the basement flooded, but she got away so lightly.
Here’s technology at work: they had no power so didn’t know what was going on. My dad was in England with the internet. My sister was in the basement on her cellphone to my dad, who was watching streaming TV from Tennessee, warning her when it was going to hit.
Really, it’s a disaster of epic proportions. Just, I think, that thankfully people were prepared enough so the death toll was relatively small, which keeps it off the top slots in the news.
I have family in Phil Campbell but due to recent surgery I can’t assist in clean-up right now, so thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping out!
What MAJORLY pissed me off is that 300 people died in tornadoes in the tri-state area (mostly in Alabama) and it was relegated to a scroll for the fucking royal wedding. And if you really want to be furious read the comments on CNN and other news threads about it- the ones not making redneck/trailer jokes are bashing Obama. There are bodies buried under debris, perfect fucking time for politisnark.
shellofmyformerself, would you please alert family and friends from Phil Campbell about the Facebook page of found items. Best wishes for a speedy recovery from surgery!
I was watching this storm from from Ohio and I was seeing cloud tops of 65,000 feet in places along a 900 mile front. It wasn’t a question of if there were going to be tornadoes, just how many. Sadly, people have to experience it to take the storm warnings seriously.
What a horrible thing to go through. Maybe we should teach this stuff in science class.
I will let them know…I’ve been looking through all the pages to see if anything looks familiar but so far nothing.
Thanks to everyone who is helping out!
Magiver, it seems like I read that a warning was issued for the day of the storm; that conditions were considered ripe for a lot of tornadoes. I thought I read that a lot of things were closed that day because of it, but I can’t find any cites.
Donation information is on the Montgomery TV station web page:
Here also is a page for found pets.
They were absolutely talking about it. that’s my point. That’s how I was aware of the front and was tracking it. Unless you’ve been in one, or seen the immense power of a tornado it doesn’t click just how bad it can get and how little warning once they drop. All we got from this storm was a couple of little tornadoes and they were in small towns. I just happen to start tracing the storm south when I saw the intensity.
Until you’ve seen an entire community of brick houses completely erased off their slab foundations it doesn’t sink in how important a basement is. Maybe people get desensitized to weather interruptions for thunder storms. Don’t know. I’ve seen the destruction and I’ve been caught out in 100 knot wind shear. I take the warnings serious enough to stop what I’m doing and look at the information available.
What struck me most about some of the pictures were the trees that were stripped of all branches and all the bark. That is one powerful sand blasting.
Umm, Man, Ninety, talk about a Small World----- I lived in Pine Flat for ten years, now rent it to a wunnerful blues musician, maybe someday come on back…SO… Your ex must be my neighbor, because the other end of the road was pretty trashed, according to my neighbor phone call to check in.
And, gotta say, I have all heartbreak for everyone in the path of the storm,but, my heart also was broken for all the newly nesting birds, squirrels, turtles, really every little life that was waking up for springtime. They were all ripped to shreds as well, all the more tragedy. That type of tornado is a BEAST, np way to get out of it. Superior Pain.
Yikes, elelle
Oops, sorry. :o
@ellelle, my ex lives on Fudgetown Road. He has friends in Pine Flat. I hope your musician friend is OK!
Speaking as a Briton, I think that’s disgusting. I’ve been reading about this on the BBC website, and it sounds like they’ve had more coverage than some US networks.
Best wishes to all affected.
Heartbreaking; I have old college friends in Huntsville, all’s well apparently for them; Anniston is near one of the (now closed) posts where I did military service.
In fairness some of the US networks have been quite good on this. NBC’s chief anchorman Brian Williams ditched his flight to London and took one to Alabama instead and has been broadcasting from the field on-scene since.
I am not in tornado territory per se, but in the hurricane region, and scenes like that renew my deep appreciation for my reinforced concrete load walls and roof slab. Which won’t help me much in case of 100-year flooding, there’s always some storm effect that gets you. And I imagine you’re right, maybe there’s a certain desensitization upon entering “thunderstorm season” for those who keep living through it.
I’ve actually seen tornadoes in person before twice but just the video of the tornadoes that hit Tuscaloosa (a city I lived in off and on for several years so I know it pretty well) was more terrifying than the real ones I saw (which were small and at a distance). The one that hit the Tuscaloosa shopping mall, which is a medium sized mall, was damned near as wide as the mall itself- I’ve never seen one that size.
My sister is in Tuscaloosa now, sleeping on a church floor at night, which I’m very proud of her for- she delivered generators and lots of food collected where she lives on the coast- and says that water is the major need in the place at the moment. This is corroborated by a friend of mine who lives there got only mild damage at her house and even kept her electricity and cable through it all but her water is undrinkable and such is the case in many neighborhoods.
Even though I haven’t lived there in almost 5 years it’s weird seeing footage of many buildings I knew well and drove by everyday that are now just rubble. It’s also always weird with tornadoes and hurricanes when you see a house that’s been torn into 50,000 pieces but a vase filled with silk flowers is still on a dresser unmoved.
Tuscaloosa is not the only place hit of course. One of my co-workers lost a 5 year old cousin in a small town 40 miles north of Montgomery (my grandmother’s hometown of Eclectic- which is incidentally the least likely city to be named Eclectic you’ll ever see) and the small cities of Cullman and Arab were hit hard as were several rural areas. We get tornadoes every year but not like this.
Just a few hours ago I happened to be on the way home from a road trip and was coming in from U.S. 78 East headed towards Interstate 20, right at the Birmingham city limits. Before that, there had been the occasional highway sign bent in two or the odd patch of trees broken off halfway up, but right at that spot I really understood the meaning of that journalistic cliche, the “swath of destruction”. Pretty much a straight line, back as far as you could see on both sides of the road: Trees broken in half like toothpicks with their branches torn off, power and telephone lines lying on the ground, houses with their roofs torn off, other houses just demolished, a billboard crumpled up like a piece of paper; and cars parked all along the side of the road with people standing there looking at the destruction–probably many of them the people who had lived in those houses.
And I understand Tuscaloosa was hit even harder. Very sobering.
You are so welcome, and I hope that your family is safe.