2011 Tornados - 6 months later

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It's been six months after an F4 tornado passed a mile and a half away from my parents house (the Green Pin). I was with them that night, and this is the story of our lengthy and circuitous trip to check on my grandmother (the Blue Pin) who wouldn't answer her phone.  (Yes, she now has a hearing aid)  I went out to visit my parents last Sunday, and I snapped some pictures to let you see what things look like now.  Some people have been able to rebuild, some chose not to rebuild, and others are still in the process.

This area is fairly rural, and the lasting damage was done to the landscape.  Trees were splintered and snapped in half.  You can clearly see the path of the tornado as you wind through the roads bordering Tennesse and Georgia on the way to my parents.

The land around this house had to be completely cleared away.  There was no clear cutting, or taking the timber for lumber.  The twisted trees are not structurly sound enough to be used for that purpose.  Most of the scattered trees were burned in months of brush fires.  What was not burned was only suitable to be chipped and made into pulpwood.  The house is being rebuilt to match the previous layout and style, and they're making progress.  This picture barely shows the RV parked in the driveway.  This family has not been able to move back into their home.

A trailer identical to the one brought in here was in thrown up and into a tree during the tornado.  That is left of this tree can be seen in the far left of this picture.  Maybe because it was such an obvious total loss, and the structure so easy to replace, but this was the first home in the neighborhood that the family was able to move in to.  Everything around them was a complete mess, and they also lived in an RV but they were able to move into the new mobile home within a few months.

The mobile home here was the scariest part of the drive after the tornado.  It was thrown across the road, and up the hill from this slab.  The shower, water heater, toilet, were all literally scattered on the hill. This was something you saw and immediately felt that no one could survive.  Luckily no fatalities were reported at this address.

The area is recovering, but the scars will show for at least the next 2-4 years.

Tornado Stories

I just wanted to share a few quick tornado stories. One from my cousin at the University of Alabama, one from a co-worker, and one of my own.

Moving Out
My cousin is a freshman at the University of Alabama. This year she lived on the 14th floor of 'Tut' and watched from her window as a massive tornado destroyed Tuscaloosa. The university lost power & water, was forced to move graduation, and cancel finals. I can't tell you how much my cousin hated that. She stayed 2 nights on campus with limited food and water then moved out. The move out process is the story I wanted to share. Picture in your head a 14 story, all girls dorm. Then add some Alabama heat. Then take away all power and sources for clean water. Then think about all of these girls trying to move out at once. In order to avoid as many trips up and down the crowded stairs as possible guess what happened? Lots of clothes and bedding shoved into garbage bags and tossed out 14 story windows, exploding as they hit the ground. Call me whatever name you want, I think that's funny.

'Nilla Waffers
One of my co-workers lives in 'downtown' Ringgold, and his home was hit in the storm. One day last week his son, a local teacher off work due to the closed schools, was clearing brush at my coworkers house when he saw some people walking up the street. It was a father and his 4 year old daughter pushing a stroller up the street and talking to each person she passed. When she approached my co-worker's son, she asked him if he wanted anything. He said no, he was fine. She pressed again, asking if he wanted a cookie. He said yes, and she handed him a Single Vanilla Wafer cookie, and walked away. This 4 year old girl saw all of the devastation around her, had a box of 'Nilla Wafers, and wanted to share. She knew how many people were suffering, so she gave only one cookie so she could give something to as many people as she could. How FREAKING CUTE is that!

The Coolest & Saddest thing I have ever Seen
This is not a very good picture because I felt HORRIBLE taking a photo of these people and not stopping to help. I was in this area because my uncle owns some property on the south end of Clonts Road in Apison TN, and he asked my dad and I to come by and help him make some decisions about his barn that was flattened in the tornado. He was running late, and since we were coming from the GA side, he told us to drive up to the end of the road and come back to meet him. It looked like a war zone. It was worse than the other areas I had been through because of how concentrated the population is. As we passed the painted "We Survived" and "God Bless Our Community" signs and came to the end of the road, we saw about 12 cars parked on the corner. The neighborhood coming together for a bonfire. The sense of community in the middle of all the destruction was overwhelming and encouraging. When we stopped to make our turn, we looked closer at the bonfire and realized that the fire was burning what was left of a home. I have never seen anything so sad in my life. The sense of intrusion on something so real and painful, it made my heart slow down, wanting to minimize my impact on the scene. You just knew if you weren't helping, you shouldn't be there. What was happening was not to looked at from the outside like an exhibit in the zoo. The bonfire reminded my dad of a refugee camp you would see on TV. It was not something I was expecting to stumble upon less than 5 miles from my parents undamaged home. It was so great that the community was coming together to support each other and work through the destruction, but the work that had to be done was beyond sad.

Tornado

On Wednesday April 27th, 2011 the southeast saw one of the largest tornado outbreaks in our history. One tornado, an EF4 with winds of 195 MPH, passed about a mile and a half from where I was staying that night, my parent's house - and we didn't even hear it.

All day the waves of storms passed my parent's house to the north. My parents live in northwest Georgia, a few miles south of the TN state line. Its a very rural area technically called the Keith Community. [Its outside of a little town called Ringgold(population 2,242), outside a smaller town called Cohutta (population 582), and I have always simplified things by telling people I'm from Chattanooga, TN.] Before this storm cell hit near us, we watched the marathon storm coverage on our local TV station, and when a transformer on our street blew, we were able to listen to the same coverage on the local radio station. As it was too early in the season for the AC, all of our windows were open, and we felt as the air turned cool, warm, then cool again. Everything was calm and dry, so we took the nervous dog for a walk, and watched the teal blue-green sky light up orange with lightening in the clouds. When our local weather man, Paul Barys, said the storm was going to hit Ringgold in 8 minutes, we took our candles, and a grateful puppy, into our basement. When Paul said the danger had passed us, the puppy was hesitant to leave the safety of the basement, and went immediately and on his own to his safe place in the half bath upstairs. We didn't have a single large limb down, and our neighbors a street over had power.

We knew we were lucky, and immediately thought of my grandmother 20 minutes away, who lives near an area mentioned in earlier storm alerts. The last time a tornado was in our area, 1997, Grandmother had about 70 trees down on her property, but thankfully no damage to her house. We knew she would be worried, so Dad and I loaded a chainsaw and some gloves in the car to go check on her. We had NO IDEA that a major tornado had passed between out homes.



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The tornado that passed near us left a debris field nearly a mile wide, with a 1/2 mile section of barren land scattered with the bases of snapped trees in the center. We tried to reach my grandmother first via our normal route, London Lane, but the trees were piled 10-12 feet high across a road littered with power lines and the remnants of 3 large metal barns. Next we tried I-75 to our south, but the interstate was shut down. Then we tried the back roads north of our house, where we ran into a family who had lost everything and couldn't find a clear road to get to the hospital. We passed a stove laying on the side of the road, a school where you could smell natural natural gas, and drove over countless downed power lines. The devastation spanned almost 30 miles before we could find a point to cross. To make a long & frustrating story short. It took over 3 hours to discover that my grandmother was sound asleep and safe. (Side note...its time to teach Grandmother how to turn her cell phone on)

By the time we made our way home, over 200 trees on London Lane had been cleared to grant one lane of limited access. Even at 1:30am, you could tell that entire forests were gone. This was the place it smelled the strongest of Christmas trees. We drove through one mobile home that was thrown across the road and up a hill, and were thankful to later see the Katrina style markings that indicated no one was killed at this home. We didn't even see the mobile home in a tree. It was absolutely eerie to drive through this area that night. Everything seemed quiet, and so unbelievably sad. It was 5 days later before we were allowed to pass through again.

The roads are now almost always open, power has been restored, and other utility companies continue to restore services to this area. All in all there were 16 fatalities within 5 miles of my parents house...and we didn't even hear the tornado.

Here are some pictures I have taken from my iPhone going to and from work. While Dad still drives through a mobile home twice a day, they have taken one out of the trees.





I have to say this again. We were lucky.