Lots of Deaths in Alabama

[DanStokes]

We dodged the bullet here in Wilmington. I'm not sure how The Maty's (greenjunk and mikematy, iirc) and Russell came thru it - Raleigh was more in the thick of it. I don't think Winston-Salem (Luke, Betterwithboost) was hit.

Best to all - this is tough stuff.

Dan

[PassmoreRacing]

It's bad. I live in Moody. It hit 1/2 mile from my house. The Mayor of Tuscaloosa just came on and said at this point they have 45 fatalities, 992 injuries, and 446 MISSING. Plesant Grove was hit very hard as well. They've went around like in Katrina marking houses with X and O's. People have been finding debris in their yard from over a hundred miles away. If you go on youtube and search Tuscaloosa Tornado you'll see alot of footage of just a small piece of what it looked like. These people need our prayers.

[64falconsix]

Everyone will be in our prayers.

[pdub]

Went on a business road trip today with some of my cohorts. We had lunch (which is a pleasure, it means we're all okay, under the circumstances). There was a lot of discussion where everybody was talking about the damage in ther own neighborhood, etc.

One of the guys, a BIG manager, noted that we were talking about things he wasn't aware of, because his power is still off (no TV or computer to get the news).

I could really ID with that, from back when Hurricane Hugo carved a hole through South Carolina.

This post is only because after Hugo, we were without power for two weeks, trees on houses and the power grid destroyed, so we missed the media coverage of our own disaster. But you don't need to see the coverage of the disaster if you are IN it. That much doesn't really matter, and it never will. You don't need to see it on TV if you are in it already, in real life. The TV folks are all hovering around taking pictures of YOU, or your damaged property, and then they drive away. A few days later, there's another story that's more interesting.

I know they have a valuable job to do, but....they don't even tell the story right a lot of the time. And then they drive away.

[Lon_H]

I live in Madison County, Alabama, Hazel Green. Right now I'm in Winchester Tn, at my folk's lake house. Power is still out and TVA doesnt know when it'll be restored. I remember bad tornados but nothing like this.

Tuscaloossa took a bad hit and so did the Sand Mountain area.


I was just getting home when they anounced a tornado hitting Carter Grove Rd, the street I live on, luckily we did not get any damage.

[Barry Donovan]

very serious stuff going on there.

I have never seen anything that large ever.. not even a movie has thought that big.



With that risk, does the towns turn into abandoned?

tuscaloosa and tornado seem synonymous.
Trying to make positive notes in the debris.. I noticed the boarded roofs do better than plywood... taking chunks, leaving more of a building.
if you let the sucker suck, maybe damage gets lessened. no way out of that size of destruction...

[realsteelfreak]

Family is fine, thanks for asking. I've no idea about RealStealFreak, but I think he was not in the path of the storms.

I have been fine, my laptop has been down for over a week . Just got it back up. We missed the warnings by a county, just thunderstrms here. I was actually driving my tanker through the mess in Kingsport Tn , Norton and Wise Va.
Green County Tn got messed up along with a town in Va on I81 Exit 39 , lost a few people also.

Hope all is well

[tedly]

Glad to hear you're alright and still have a house!

[pdub]

In an odd sense, I feel real guilty about sitting here with the power on typing about the whole thing on the computer. I feel guilty because we DIDN'T get mowed over, and I feel so much emotion for the people who were destroyed.

That's only because I've been on the other side of it, with the hurricane. But that was a big regional disaster, it affected everybody. This tornado oubreak...my daddy put it into perspective years ago. He said, lay a county map out on the table, a county map as big as the table. A map so big it shows streets and side streets. There's your county.

Now, take a pencil (for your average tornado) or even a fat Magic Marker (for a massive mile-wide monster tornado) and just at random make one big line through the county on the map. There's your path of destruction. Anything covered by the line is gone, and everything else is just about like it always has been. Maybe some tree limbs down. Tornadoes are nature's form of terrorism.

Like in Matt's home town of Ringgold. That town's obliterated. It's just not fair.

On my longest straight-line bicycle trip, I really enjoyed my overnight stay in Stockton, Missouri. The towns out there (at least way back then) were so far apart that it was good to see people at all. That was a classic little spot, enough to make me write a story about that experience, that one day there. Well, a few years after my visit, an F-4 tornado came through there and essentially took the town out.

Out of all the thousands of square miles of nothing that was out there, that tornado just HAD to come down Main Street in Stockton. That's not fair. That's just cruel, that's what that is.

If you live through it, you pick up and go on. I think it's a reminder of how lucky we all are to be around every single day. Live for today, to a point, but at least plan and figure you'll be here tomorrow, too.

All those years ago, while the hurricane was knocking down every tree in our part of the state (huge WHUMPS during the loudest and darkest night ever), my mom said, "We make plans, and God laughs." That's just about all she said that night. Not much more.

[DanStokes]

Lon, I'm SO pleased that you and the fam came thru OK. And my heart continues to go out to those who didn't.

Dan

[realsteelfreak]

Bad weather is hard to figure out why one house gets hit and another doesnt, same as for towns. It s bad to have any loss of life and especially the loss of over 300 people. All we can do is be thankful for our families and homes that were safe, and show compassion to the ones that wasnt as lucky.