On this day just one short year ago, April 27th 2011, I found myself huddled in a bath-tub with 4 other girls covered with pillows and a mattress, protecting ourselves the best we could in the event that the impending category 6 tornado were to continue on its path and rip our home off the ground.
It was the most traumatizing, horrific, and emotional experience I have ever gone through...
The tornado sirens went off, and I was at home baking and preparing for an event I was throwing at my house later on that night. Only one of my housemates, my best friend Saran, was home. The news stations had been informing us all day long of the weather reports. Alerting locals of the possibility of a tornado touching down. Historically Tuscaloosa was just north enough that most tornados did not touch down anywhere near us, but this time it was different.
I have always been very skittish when it comes to weather, you could say that before this tornado experience- lightning and thunder storms were one of my biggest fears. A bad storm could induce tears in a matter of seconds, irrational but true. Saran knew this, and kept me occupied with frosting cupcakes and decorating the house while she kept an eye on the news. Saran was orignially from Alabama and so she had experience with tornado sirens and the processes to follow. Me being an east coast girl, growing up in New England my entire life- the extent of weather disasters I dealt with included following the news watching a hurricane climb up the coast and having days to prepare the house for the potential damage, or massive amounts of snowfall that come with a strong winter blizzard- but tornados, that wasn't something I was at all prepared for.
The siren went off and Saran said to me "Jenn we have to go now." My heart stopped, I dropped the spatula that was in my hand on the floor, grabbed my phone and headed towards the front door. We lived in a 3 floor town house within a college complex just 2-3 minutes off campus. Our townhouse was located above a 4 person flat, because we were not at ground level we had to run outside, down the stairs, and hope that our neighbors below us were home and could let us in.
When I swung open our front door, the sky was yellow, like there was a color filter over the sun cascading this eerily yellow tint over everything. Thankfully the girls downstairs were home. In the event of a tornado, the safest place you can be is the inner most part of your home, especially away from windows. In most cases if you don't have a basement, the next best place to go is the bathroom because of how deeply rooted into the ground most plumbing is. We made our way to their bathroom, all 4 of us squished in a very small tub. The news channel was blasting so that we could listen until the electricity cut out. At this point we had absolutely no idea what was going to happen.
Our other friends and housemates were on campus at this point, we lived just a few minutes off campus, but the tornados' path that day thankfully avoided our school completely. We had been texting back and forth with them- as they were watching the tornado in its path of destruction on the news. Right before the cell signal cut out, my best friend Jessica who was on campus, texted me and told me to hold onto Saran and hold pillows to our heads as tight as we could, she was watching this tornado on the news as it made a beeline straight for our house and she told me "I love you, be safe."
The lights went out, the tv suddenly turned off, our electricity was gone, we knew then the tornado had to be close. My cellphone lost all service, and suddenly everything in the world was dead silent, the only thing you could hear was the four of us breathing heavily, waiting.
All we could do was wait, and hope, cross all our fingers and toes, hoping that this deadly tornado would some how, not tear us off the ground. Before we could blink the noise outside was suddenly louder than anything I had ever heard, everything in the room was shaking, for about 20 seconds it was loud like this, and then dead silent, and then back to the noise. Slowly the noise drifted farther and farther away until things were seemingly quiet again.
We waited there in the bathtub about 30 minutes after that before we opened the door, afraid to see what we would find. We walked out of the bathroom, slowly opened the front door- and saw, absolutely nothing.
Everything that was once standing, anything that if it were one hour prior we could see if we were standing on our front steps, had been demolished, left flattened, or thrown hundreds of feet in another direction. Tuscaloosa Alabama was unrecognizable. In a matter of minutes it had been reduced to a pile of rubble.
With some strike of luck, just as the tornado was no more than 50 yards from my front steps, it jumped to the other side of the street and continued to tear through the town we all called home- missing my house almost entirely.
Over 350 people were killed that day, innumerable amounts of homes were destroyed, and lives were completely devastated. Never in my life had I ever seen destruction to this extent.
My family, friends, and loved ones back home did not know for quite some time that day whether or not my friends, teammates and I in Alabama had survived the Tornado. Cell service was down, and the news channels at home on the east coast were going crazy trying to keep up with the storm tracking. All anyone from home knew, was that this deadly tornado had ripped through Tuscaloosa Alabama, leaving virtually nothing behind it.
I will never forget though, the way the people of Tuscaloosa Alabama came together in those next few days. Rallying together to help wherever they could. That had been my second year at the University of Alabama, and if I had learned anything while I was there- the most important was that the people would do anything, for anyone. It was a time of complete and utter devastation, and mourning- as many grieved the loss of loved ones, while many others held onto any shred of hope that their loved ones who had been missing, would be found in the rubble. Yet amongst all of the negative, the people of Tuscaloosa banned together, people traveled from all over the state of Alabama bringing supplies and resources, willing to help in any way possible.
It is so hard for me to believe that it has already been an entire year since this unforgettable experience, but not a day goes by that I don't think about the people who I was surrounded by and the support and sheer willingness to help, in any way possible, that I witnessed when this disaster took place.
Tuscaloosa Alabama will always be a place for me to call home; for the friends there who quickly became my family, the memories that I made, and the ways in which I grew from the experiences I had during m time there.
Above all else, I will never forget April 27th 2011. An experience that still makes me shutter to think about, and makes me sick to my stomach when I am asked to tell 'my story,' but at the same time makes me so proud to have been a part of such an incredibly amazing group of people. All coming together in a time of complete helplessness to make a difference. I write this today from the East Coast, on the one year anniversary of the tragic event, wishing more than anything I could be with my friends and family down there as this event and the many lives lost are memorialized, but they are all in my thoughts!
