Today marks the one year anniversary of April 27th, 2011. I’m sure some people saw the aftermath on the news, and more than I care to know didn’t register it at all. Twelve months ago in Tuscaloosa our lives were turned upside down. Another bad Alabama storm that turned worse than bad. My husband and I drove back from a coveted night away in Huntsville that day, narrowly missing the tornado in Cullum. We earlier gathered in the ballroom of the hotel under a tornado watch, feeling invincible. We were jaw-dropped at merely the trees downed on the side of the highway, some snapped in half from the wind of the day’s events thus far, little did we know…
We returned to a house without power and an anxious mother-in-law caring for our son. The radio forewarned of another storm, the third of the day was heading towards Tuscaloosa. Without power or internet, we sat in the car, expecting the usual “be safe” message that accompanies these tremendous yet frequent Southern storms. Instead we heard grave messages of caution and warning admonishing us not to take this one lightly. I texted a friend, asking if we could use her cellar, because our neighborhood was close to a small tornado a couple weeks prior. “Oh and if there’s anything big, just tell me.,” I texted to her. Those words may have saved my life. My usual pharmacy, gas station, and hippy health food store were in the eye of the storm and soon ravaged. A few minutes before the big one, I received a message back: “There’s something big on the ground by downtown, take cover.” A native Alabamian does not say take cover lightly.
We took cover in the bathroom, stuffed a pillow in the small window, started the DVD player for my son and waited. No power, no internet, no phones…I know why people didn’t take cover, I probably shouldn’t have. The cellar where we were planning to head, we later found out was blocked by a tree down in the middle of one of the worst hit neighborhoods. We would have been trapped and needed to be cut out hours or days later. Then been faced with houses torn apart by wind, impassable streets, and bodies of victims found not far from where we would have been seeking shelter.
After we heard the train, the jet engine, or any large machine pass over our house, as people talk about with tornadoes, we headed out. We expected to see a few trees down, a couple billboard signs blown off. As we drove north, unknowingly to what is now known as the “dead zone” I looked out over a close friend’s neighborhood and could see no houses standing in full. It looked like a bomb went off and 100 houses were torn apart. I was immediately brought to tears. Not I’m sad and scared tears, but a big boo-hoo ugly cry because I knew I was looking at death.
A big rig toppled and jack-knifed, lay across the road. A pickup truck carrying a man with two crushed legs, zig-zagging in brutal directions, being held by a friend in tears headed to the hospital. Phones were congested and no calls were going through. The fate of friends and loved ones seemed to hang in the balance. In flip flops and a dress, I ran…over live power lines, besides crushed vehicles, and to climb over the first of countless downed trees that day. I was prepared to dig through the rubble. I arrived to her street, telling my husband and friend, to be ready to do the same. From down her block, I saw her neatly cut bob weeping on the phone, with tears streaming down her face. She, a polite and orderly lady, was covered in dirt and as I came to find out when I hugged her, shards of glass. I don’t know what words were said, but we hugged and cried. I didn’t even look at her house, because she was alive and that was all that mattered. A hundred-year-old tree crushed her neighbors house, smashed and toppled cars everywhere, houses without roofs and walls, and a thick coat of mud over everything. That neighborhood, which I had been to countless times, still shocked me every single time after that. Nothing stays the same, tornado or not.
We continued to walk across apocalyptic neighborhoods to check off the list of friends within walking distance. Cars were useless because the roads were impassible, and people on bicycles had a leg up. Little did we know that far more people were affected than what our eyes could see, but we had no way to know. After hours and days, a count was slowly gathered when the phones would ring, and all were safe. Their homes, their cars, and their lives were not, but they were.
And certainly there were tears. Tears at the first storm after, tears driving through damaged neighborhoods to get back to our still-standing house, tears of guilt that we could have taken more damage. Tears watching the line of power trucks from out-of-state coming to help restore a necessity. I cried because it was hope, somebody out there cared enough to send them. When the looting and uncertainty immediately followed the storm, we all lost sleep. Then came the National Guard, hope. For a brief moment in time the nation turned an ear to our pain. Then Bin Laden died a few days later, and our brief moment of outside empathy seemed to vanish. We turned back to each other, because nobody could do it alone.
I used to think relief work was tractors and Humvees. They’re part of it. Tuscaloosa soon learned that buying a chainsaw, picking glass and nails out of a flowerbed, and cooking someone a hot meal was “storm relief.” The X's of the search and rescue teams that we saw in New Orleans, became ones on our friends and neighbors houses. Lots of 0's for no loss of life, and then you'd round a usual corner and be struck by a 1. One life lost in that house. Forty three lives lost that day in our city alone, there should have been more. Thousands of houses torn apart, lives turned upside down.
An older friend of mine, who nearly lost everything in the tornado tells me, “we all have storms in our lives.” Storms of cancer, storms of divorce, storms of relationships. To me, it has created a greater need for God and for people. Need is a definitive construct of life. It is life to need, and to fill other’s needs.
People ask, “where is God in this?” I don’t have an answer, but I know He was there. In protection, in grace. More lives should have been lost, more damage should have been done (if that’s even possible). And if God wasn’t there in the eye of the storm, He was certainly there after. The sweet neighbors who brought sandwiches when there was no power nor roads to drive on. The churches that gathered supplies to bring to those hardest hit. The relief teams that traveled across the country to make a difference in stranger’s lives. I told everyone I could, thank you. You are God to us.
Watching the news is now painful with a new empathy. A tidal wave in Asia, an earthquake in Europe, I understand. I think no better relief workers than those who understand. The first 6-12-24-48-72 hours were what mattered the most, when the help was so desperately needed…and ironically, the only ones who could help were usually the victims too. But they did. Hugs between strangers, a bank teller checking on the safety of my family, and well-wishes from a relief shelter across the world in tsunami-stricken Japan.
I was not sucked up into the funnel cloud, or found under a crushed car, and only had thousands of dollars of damage to our house and not hundreds, like friends. But I was profoundly effected. Kids on the playground playing storm..."the tomato is coming!" and finding a safe place in Hobby Lobby during any given rain storm are signs that there is a new normal. I in no way intend to be melodramatic and pretend I saw or experienced the worst, but my story is mine. For everyone involved in big and small ways, it has been a healing process. We moved away from Tuscaloosa, and a new prick of pain comes with every visit. Living there it became normal, and we deadened ourselves to it, because we had to.
The storm will last more than the day of April 27th, 2011. It will last longer than these 12 months. The few untouched remnants of storm damage have become a shrine to the pain everyone felt, some much more profoundly than others. The damage says “it happened” and that the pain is real. It was hard to watch demolition of already ravaged buildings, because it somehow erased tangible proof of people's fear and pain. In the months and years to come, when everything is repaired, it will become just another story for the books. We live for the hope of tomorrow, cherishing those who understand the fear and pain that few will understand. The good news is that there is hope, it exists.
