Thanks to those of you who have checked on us in Birmingham. We’re fine. Shaken to the core, but fine. Our home was slightly damaged and we will be without power indefinitely. Death toll in the area at 130 and expected to climb today. Our daughter Claire was in the Tuscaloosa tornado and, thanks to her very heavy duty apartment complex, was unhurt in spite of the tornado more or less coming right through it. If you haven’t seen this video yet, I recommend it:
My wife and I used to live right in that most severely impacted area of Tuscaloosa.
I won’t be online much until we get power & Internet back and I don’t know how long that will be. I’m now able to get to work and we have power and internet there, but I can’t get to the board.
Thanks. Keep the people of Alabama in your thoughts & prayers.
I gave blood this morning, I’m O+ so it helps but any helps at this stage. It doesn’t hurt and it really doesn’t cost you a thing plus I got a wonderful bag, actually the wife got a wonderful bag, I got a bottle of mineral supplemented water. The Salvation Army and the Red Cross are going to be in these communities for some time.
Thankful for your personal safety, shocked and dismayed by the event and losses of life and property. I talked to my bro. in Tennessee yesterday and they escaped damage but he described the trees snapped off at four feet from twisting winds, and attempting to drive home in ultra heavy rains and such…
In the whole video I could only see one other moving car, and no people. Does anyone know how foolish the camera-people were being? How much danger were they in? How likely is a large tornado to abruptly change speed or direction?
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Its not the time to say something heavily ironic about climate change and severe weather events, but boy is it tempting.
Same can be said about some “real” journalists and what their photographers do, I guess I don’t see the real difference. I am surprised that this video lacked the usual “Golly, look at that! YEEHAWWW!” kind of commentary.
We call house trailers “tornado toys.” Emergency services all over the country tell people during an eminent tornado threat to LEAVE THEIR MOBILE HOME and seek shelter just about any place else, few do so. Last year over half of the deaths due to tornadoes were folks in mobile homes or cars.
I heard on the news last night that they finally got power back to the hospitals and a few major sites, and that a big search and rescue crew from Louisiana was on the way.
We are personally doing fine. Power is back on. Just a couple of minor repairs to do at house. No Internet or phone service at our home, but that’s no more than a minor inconvenience.
Only now…if even now…are we starting to get the full picture of what has happened in Alabama. There is much misery. Lots of people have come to help. The big worry now is a lack of support for all these tiny communities that are not getting the same attention as Tuscaloosa and Birmingham.
Please do what you can to help. Donate at www.uwca.com.
After the storms hit, I really would never believe we’d have power back on in 5 days and phone and internet back in a week. If you could wrap your head around the extent of the damage (which we haven’t yet been able to do and we live here), you’d never believe the utilities would be back up, either.