Tuscaloosa Tornado

 

Tuscaloosa News article about Danny Huffman:

http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20110608/NEWS/110609781

 

Southern Living article about Glendale Gardens featuring Emily Cochrane Jamison and her mother:

 Amazing pictures:

http://www.fikespix.com/storm/

 

Mike Hicks' account of his and Roxie's house on Forest Lake:

That Wednesday

by Mike Hicks on Friday, May 13, 2011 at 2:25pm
April 27, 2011, 5:00 A.M. we’re awakened by a crash and the whole house shaking as a 36” hackberry tree falls on the southwest corner of our house. It punches a hole in the roof and water is pouring in the house. I take off work to deal with the insurance people and the repairmen. Roxie’s school is cancelled for the day.
 That afternoon Nolan, Lewis Foster and I are having a few beers in the shop (we had power in the shop but not in the house) and laughing at James Spann’s hysteria over the weather.
 5:00, 12 hours after the morning incident Nolan and I heard a distant roar above the radio and the sirens. Just as we were remarking on it we heard Lewis screaming from the back yard “IT’S A TORNADO!! THAT’S A F**KING TORNADO!!
 Nolan sprinted for his house and I ran to the back yard.
 To the southwest there was this HUGE massive storm cloud in the distance and as you stared at it you could tell it was rotating. It was so far away that the funnel was hidden by the horizon but you could see the rotation and you could see tiny specks of debris floating hundreds of feet in the air like buzzards gliding on the breeze. The longer I watched it the more apparent it became that it was heading directly towards us.
 Lewis bolted for Nolan’s house and Roxie and I stared at it a few seconds more before running into the house ourselves. I stopped before going inside and reached into my pocket thinking I might get a video of it but by this time it was really loud and just too damn close. I didn’t want to be one of THOSE idiots so I ran into the house.
 Our “safe place” is in the little foyer outside the downstairs bathroom and Roxie was already huddled up there with one of the cats in her arms. I said “No. Get in the closet” (the one under the staircase) As she did the cat escaped her grasp and ran through the den.
We had to let him go as we threw the vacuum cleaner out of the closet and crouched down in the doorway.
 It still hadn’t reached us yet so I crawled out and peeked around the corner so I could see out the den doors into the backyard.
 Roxie said “Get back in here!”
 I said “I’m okay”
 She said “No, you’re not!”
 About that time schitt started zooming by the windows and I scurried back into the closet like a rabbit down a hole.
 All this time I had a death grip on my little dog, Ally who was petrified. All afternoon she had been nervous and not gotten more than two feet from me. We still had the door to the closet open as the Tornado hit the house.
 The roar had intensified and was deafening as we heard several large objects strike the house then a HUGE CRASH that shook the entire house like a bomb had gone off (I think that was when the chimney crashed through the house) that’s when I slammed the door and we pushed ourselves a little deeper into the closet. Suddenly the door, doorframe and all, crashed in on us, hitting me in the head and really shoving us into the very back of the closet. That’s when I lost my glasses and my grip on my dog.
 Understandably, Roxie was hysterical as our house was being torn apart all around us.
At first she (and I, too) was worried about the house but after a few seconds were we worried more for our safety as the deafening wind, the awful sound of splintering, crashing wood and the very walls were caving in around us. It truly felt like a malevolent being, an evil force that was dead set on tearing our house to shreds to get to us.
 It seemed like an eternity but was probably less than a minute from impact until it passed on over us. As it quieted down I started to push my way out of the rubble (to the protests of Roxie who was afraid it wasn’t finished or that there might be another one coming). The bottom of the closet door and doorframe was about up to our shoulders so we had to squirm backwards to get out from under it. Then there was just some minor debris on us like sheetrock and insulation.
 When we stood up it was like we had been transported to another planet. Another planet that had been at war for a decade.
 Everything was gone.
 Everything.
 I looked north to Nolan’s house and had a sinking feeling in my gut when I saw the damage it had sustained. Roxie and I scampered out of the rubble that was our house, Roxie stepping on a nail in her bare foot because she had lost a shoe, and started screaming for Nolan and Tessa.
 They immediately answered, and they were all fine. The three of them and their three labs had all ridden it out in their bathtub.
 I found my truck and my old pair of glasses so I could see and crawled back into the rubble to look for Ally. I found our hiding spot but I couldn’t find her nor did I hear her as I called her name. We had to go, I’d have to look for her the next day.
 Fortunately, some people came through later that night searching for trapped survivors and heard her whimpering and managed to dig her out. They didn’t know what to do with her so one man took her home with him to Birmingham and brought her back to us the next day. Since then, I have had at least a dozen people ask me to tell them the story of how someone found my dog in Birmingham. Heh-heh
Anyway, we all made it through unscathed, including all our pets. We spent the next week digging through the remains of our houses for whatever we thought was worth saving. We had dozens and dozens of friends, relatives and strangers helping us dig, carry and pack away our stuff.
 We are fortunate to have a nice place to stay as we await the cleanup and rebuilding that is ahead of us. Our plans are to rebuild on our lot but we’re probably going to have a fight on our hands keeping the integrity of the lake intact as developers are already trying to buy up the lots on the lake.
We’re all just happy to be here.
No complaining.