What a wonderfully normal day this has been. Early-morning doctor’s appointment…stopping to purchase freshly-picked local strawberries at the roadside stand…baseball playoffs at the school.
On one hand it seems like ages ago when what they are now referring to as the "generational tornadoes" swept through our area. However, in another way it seems like that day was only yesterday. Even a stranger who might be totally uninformed about the destruction of April 27, 2011 would only have to take one glimpse to tell that our area suffered major destruction in the not-too-distant past.
Although some areas that were destroyed have been rebuilt, other areas still have piles of debris rotting in the weather. Trees are leaning rather than reaching for the sky. Some trees that were stripped of their greenery a year ago have bravely attempted to produce new branches, but have a mangled, bizarre appearance.
Homes that made it through the storm now stand unprotected by surrounding trees that once landscaped the area. Tornado shelters have sprung up all over, and signs advertising reconstruction work or tornado shelters are at every intersection out in the county where we live.
There are emotional scars. Those who lost loved ones on that day will never fully recover. Those who lost property and personal treasures will for years wonder where the coveted items actually ended up. Even those of us who suffered minimal damage have emotional scars. A dark cloud on the horizon is now a fearful sight, and we all live by the weather reports and have learned more than we need to know about reading the radar scans on TV. Even those of us who are untrained use phrases like "wall cloud" and "hook echo". The weekly test of the tornado siren or the weather radio puts cold chills up our spines. If a tornado watch or warning should be issued for our area, total panic sets in.
We have changed several things in the last year. We now have a checklist of items to get ready when a tornado watch is issued for our area. We know what types of items to take with us to the shelter, (medicines, checkbook, flashlight, charged cell phone, etc.) and have them ready ahead of time so we can grab them up at a moment’s notice. If you have never been through a tornado you might call it overkill. In our area we call it preparedness.
So far, it has been a fairly calm spring, but on March 2 we watched an F3 tornado drop out of a cloud and hit homes only ¼ of a mile north and west of us. (Last year’s F5 hit ¼ mile south of us.) Unbelievably, the track of the March tornado meshed with the track of last year’s tornado at one point, and several of the same homes were destroyed a second time in less than a year. So, even before all of the debris from last April’s storm was cleared away, there were new piles of two-by-fours, shingles and sheetrock piled beside the road waiting to be picked up.
Again we helped neighbors sift through debris looking for items that could be salvaged.
In our area of rural Alabama, everyone helps out in a disaster. Because we live in a fairly sparsely populated area, our area was not featured in much of the post-tornado TV coverage. We were not visited by the President , or the Governor, but we stuck together and worked through it. Individuals, schools, churches and clubs helped out. Our twelve-year-old granddaughter and some of her friends earned a Girl Scout silver medal by donating hours of labor involving tornado victims in our area.
Since we did not have power the day of the tornadoes, we were not able to see (or hear) the warnings given on the local TV stations. Now that they are re-playing them today we have watched in horror as the "hook echo" headed straight for our area. We have listened to verbal warnings like "huge…massive…on the ground…getting bigger by the minute".
Will this event and others like it make us think twice about where we live? Positively not! California has earthquakes, Florida has hurricanes, New England has northeasters. God’s power is demonstrated everywhere, but so is His beauty and love. No, we plan to stay here in Sweet Home Alabama.
Will an event like this happen again? Probably.
Will we be better prepared? Definitely
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Will we accept whatever changes come to us? Hopefully. We have witnessed others adjust to situations they would not have chosen, and with the help of God, we would try to accept the misfortune along with the many blessings we have accepted and enjoyed for so many years.
Today we remember and reflect.
