15 years ago today on April 27, 2011 a tornado went through Tuscaloosa

I have a friend who is in the insurance business in Tuscaloosa. So I waited about a month for everything to calm down before I called him. I just said: What's the craziest story from the storm?

"We get a call from this lady who says she has storm damage and her house is destroyed. We plot her on this big map in our office and it's over a mile from the path of the storm. So we send someone out. And when they pull up they find a 45 foot steel beam has cut her house in two. It had been dangling from a construction crane at the new hospital renovation. And it flew basically over a mile and landed in this lady's house."

Also I remember later that summer flying from Jackson MS to Atlanta. And looking down over rural east Mississippi, and seeing the scar from the storm. It was perfectly straight. It looked like an interstate highway running at an odd angle over 100 miles right into downtown Tuscaloosa

That's all I got.

Yes. The first line came through in the morning. I drove to Jasper to see a customer. I noticed coming into town a couple interstate signs blown down. In town there were a handful of downed tree. I found power was out at my customer and they were closed. My next stop was supposed to be Cullman. I called them and they said they were closing early so their employees could go home. I decided to head home too, it just felt off. When I got home I saw the live feed of the tornado rolling into Cullman. Two tornados crossed hwy 69, the same route I would have taken. That afternoon several of us spent the afternoon at the neighbors because they have a storm cellar. It never even rained there, we shot the basketball in the driveway and watched the weather. That afternoon and evening there were SO many tornadoes. A friend/neighbor who was there is a volunteer firefighter; he got called out because multiple tornados had injured and trapped people in the county and trees blocked many roads.

That night I drove to Tuscaloosa. A couple of the things I wholesale are batteries, flashlights and sleeping bags. I loaded up all my samples, a truck load, and headed toward Tuscaloosa. The triage center was Bowers Park. Coming across the river from Northport near the softball field something was just weird. I realized looking towards Tuscaloosa everything was black. They had Hwy 82 blocked off. I am a Tuscaloosa native so I was able to drive around the city to make it to Bowers. It was chaos with all the emergency responders and shell-shocked survivors. The next morning I met a group of friends and we cut trees all day around forest lake. In the three days that followed almost everyone I knew just hit pause on life and volunteered in different ways. I walked by the house where the baseball team was looking for the white dress for the student killed. It seemed odd that with so much destruction these guys were spending energy rummaging through the debris. I didn’t realize what I’d seen until later. When I found out I cried. I admit that was not the only time I cried that week.

It was a war zone. Over the next several weeks every free minute was spent helping - mainly the forest lake area and alberta city. Putting blue tarps on roofs. Handing out water, diapers, formula, etc. Moving furniture and belongings, salvaging what could be salvaged, from destroyed and damaged homes. The worst thing I found was a dead dog. Many people saw and experienced much worse.

A friend who lived in the neighborhood between DCH and Alberta City was right on the edge of the destruction. He was there as soon as it passed. He saw some bad things. He carried a dead child from a house to the main road where emergency responders were able to get at the time. Another friend watched them find Carson Tinker’s girlfriend the next day. In the day or two that followed when you saw multiple police and EMS converge you knew they had found someone. In the days that followed you also saw spray painted “X’s” appear on destroyed and damaged homes. This signified the homes, or what had been homes, had been checked for bodies. Lots of people had their lives changed by the storms that day. I have tears running down my face now typing this, reliving it in my mind.

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15 years ago today on April 27, 2011 a tornado went through Tuscaloosa

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Tornados went through everywhere.

We had three rounds in Tennessee. The DeKalb County area in N. Alabama lost 30+ people in round one. Ringgold GA/Apison TN lost 20+ in round three.

A friend of mine called his mother because he knew she was in the path in Cleveland, TN during round three. Her last words were, "it's on me", and the line went dead.
He and several family members jumped in their cars to head to her home. He walked past her three times. Some other rescuers lifted a door and some debris, and found her body. He says to this day, "God let me walk past her so I wouldn't see her like that."

Round one I was looking out my back door. Trees and telephone poles started laying down. I ran for cover. When it was over we all started coming out to survey damage. A neighbor who retired from the local electric utility took a look around and said, "week to ten days, folks...minimum". It was nine days before power was restored. Never was so glad to see a bunch of guys from Ohio as I was on day nine when the lineman showed up.

My wife and I rented a hotel room that afternoon. A few hours later round three came through and the EF4 tornado passed less than a half mile away. The entire hotel, guests and staff, were huddled in the lobby. Lights went out and you could hear debris striking the windows and building. Some were praying. Most of us just sat silently until it passed. When an EF4 is close by, you realize what an insignificant little nothing you are in the Earth's grand scheme.

One 9 year old in Apison was with his grandmother in a mobile home. She made him get into the bathtub and covered his body with hers. He survived, she did not. He said the last thing he remembered was beiing pushed along the ground like he was being dragged behind a car. It tore him all to hell, but he did recover.

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In the evening hours of April 27, 2011, a violent and long-tracked multi-vortex tornado impacted several communities along a 54 miles (87 km) path through northern Georgia and southeast Tennessee, including Ringgold, Georgia, Apison, Tennessee and Cleveland, Tennessee. The tornado, which was on the ground for 52 minutes and became known as the Ringgold–Apison tornado or The Monster,killed over twenty people while having windspeeds that were estimated to have been as high as 190 miles per hour (310 km/h). The tornado was part of the largest outbreak of tornadoes in recorded history, and was the deadliest to hit Georgia during the outbreak.

The tornado touched down in rural Catoosa County, Georgia near Rock Spring, where it slowly intensified and damaged trees before crossing Jackson Lake and entering into Ringgold, where it damaged several commercial buildings and later residential homes. Nine people were killed in Ringgold as the tornado devastated the town at EF3 intensity, and hundreds of buildings were destroyed before the tornado crossed into Hamilton County, Tennessee before impacting Apison, where eight people were killed and EF4 damage was inflicted to several homes.

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An early 5:25am encounter with an F2 ripped the windows out of my dormers, dropped a tree through the roof of my house, and ruined roofing and trees throughout my neighborhood. Signs of the 62 tornadoes that day remained for years afterwards.

I was working at #7 mine. Owl shift. About 5 am, called out to central supply for a part, and they said all hell was breaking loose. Fans went off at the same time, so we had to head for the surface. Then that afternoon, the big one came by the mine site. Killed power and took power lines down to several of the fans. We were down 4 days getting it all cleared and back up.

There were multiple tornadoes before, and after, Tuscaloosa.

If that is near ringold ga those mountains/hills are 400 feet tall from where they tornado started.

How does elevation affect tornadoes?

I was hiding in a closet in forest hills, it took a slight turn north and missed our building but it shook like a damn earthquake.

Walking outside was wild. Houses taken off foundations, vehicles flipped over, some folks walking around dazed like zombies bleeding

Fraternity house on campus still had power so we packed some things and made the trek over there, crossing right through the middle of the path. Has to be the closest thing I can imagine a war zone looking like right after a huge artillery strike or a bombing. Just destruction everywhere

I was living in McCalla off of Exit 1 on I-459 at the time, but Tuscaloosa is my hometown. Watching the live feed of the tornado going through the middle of the city while James Spann stood and looked on speechlessly was horrifying. As it left Tuscaloosa its projected track put it directly over my house. They showed a live video feed of it about that time, and that's probably the single scariest thing I've ever seen. I remember thinking, "Ok, I'll put my daughter and wife in the tub in the downstairs bathroom and lay over the top of them, but I'm probably about to lose everything I own and possibly die." Fortunately for us, but very unfortunately for a lot of people in Hueytown and Pleasant Grove, it veered north and missed us.