I have mod permission to post this thread.
Dopers,
PLEASE HELP. Your contributions are desperately needed. As most of you probably know, the southeastern US was absolutely crippled last week by a series of tornadic storms, culminating in the outbreak on April 27.
On that day, 28 tornadoes are presently known to have touched down in the state of Alabama alone, ranging from small EF0 storms with paths 50 yards wide, all the way up to at least one monstrous EF5 storm that cut a path up to 1.5 miles wide. This storm literally wiped several towns in Alabama off the map.
The city of Tuscaloosa, AL (pop. 83,000 and the home of the University of Alabama) was essentially bisected by a killer “high end EF4” tornado that cut directly across one of the most populous areas of the city. 39 people died in that city alone. This same storm later hit several areas of metro Birmingham, the biggest city in the state. 20 people died there.
I drove up I-59 to Chattanooga last week, and as I passed the town of Trenton, Georgia, I drove through a tornado-cleared path probably half a mile wide that led directly through the heart of the town. Most of it is gone.
Smithville, Mississippi had 15 deaths. DeKalb County, Alabama had 35 people die.
The horror just goes on and on, and to make it worse, these are fairly poor areas. These people are left with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and no way to make a living.
In total, just the state of Alabama had over 200 people killed, from premature babies in hospitals to school children, to college students, to the elderly. Across the south, over 300 people are dead.
The scale of the destruction is unbelievable. I’ve seen entire neighborhoods leveled to the foundations. It’s incredible to me that anyone could possibly have survived in some of these areas. It looks very much like what I would imagine a nuclear blast looks like. I’ve seen cars piled in huge pyramids, boards driven through the sides of concrete-block buildings by 200 mph winds, steel plates wrapped around other structures as if they were tinfoil, trees snapped like toothpicks. I saw a bank building wiped off its foundation, with the only things left standing being a couple of spewing water pipes and the vault.
It was a worst-case scenario. I grew up here, and have seen many tornadoes, but none like this. I heard the EF4 storm go past my neighborhood as I huddled in the basement with my wife and 14 month-old son, and I had a niece who hid in a meat locker in a grocery store in Tuscaloosa as the tornado destroyed the building around her. She’s still terrified. She has a look in her eyes like a war survivor. It breaks my heart.
So I’m begging you: please help. Your donations of material and, especially, money, are desperately needed. I know Dopers, for all our wrangling and contentiousness, are kind, compassionate people. Donate $1, $10, hell, 50 cents. But please, please help. I can’t overstate the need.
I’ll add to this list as I can, but here are a couple of suggestions:
Any Red Cross center in the area needs donations.
The states of Mississippi and Alabama have established Emergency Management donation centers:
Please feel free to add links if you have them. I don’t mean to leave anyone out.
Thank you!