a month has passed

Friday was the one-month anniversary of the tornado, and today marks four weeks since we first awoke in our on-campus apartment. What a month it's been.

We spent the first three nights (Weds, Thurs, and Fri) sheltered at the UA rec center, where we learned that my being a student qualified us for a free short-term campus apartment. That Saturday night was our first night here. Had I known at the end of April that we would still be here for our anniversary and my birthday, I probably wouldn't have really believed it. But it's true. I'm just glad this was our 4th anniversary, not our 5th, and that I'm turning 39, not 40, next weekend. I'd hate to spend those milestones in Rose Towers.

That said, this place has been wonderful. Once the noisy roofing began at our house we were able to bring the indoor cats over with us, because the university waived the no-pet rule for the tornado refugees. The sound of the work on the roof was really frightening for them. Up to that point they were happy at home, being in familiar surroundings with us visiting them, rather than being in a strange apartment with us only with them at night.

The work on our house is progressing rapidly, at least on the outside. I think the fact that we are there for hours every day, and Tom et al. have worked nonstop to get the yard cleared out, has helped move our job along. We were ready for paint sooner than other homes might have been, because we trimmed back all the shrubs that border the house and removed the limbs.

The painters, who are fantastic, got the whole house painted in two days. There's a little bit of touching up still to do, but it was very fast work. (Being a brick home probably helped, too; the little bit of brick repair that we needed had been completed by the masons a few weeks earlier. Also we only lost one whole window, so when that one is replaced it will need to be painted. The rest only needed new glass, which was ordered and installed within two days.)

We still have no timeline on returning, although we hope to be back by June 30, our end date at Rose Towers. The interior work is the main reason we don't live in the house right now, and it hasn't begun; I have moved about 1/3 of the furniture and stuff out of the affected rooms, so whenever the ceiling repair/replacement is set up, I will call Tom in from the yard and get the rest of it shuttled into the kitchen and McKenzie's room, the two unaffected rooms.

Still need: Affected ceilings repaired/replaced and painted; affected floors sanded and refinished; and water heater inspected so gas service can be turned back on. Then we can move back in while the rest of the shoring up is completed (jacks installed in the crawlspace, gutters/trim replaced on roofline).

--Jennifer

order of events

I was surprised to reflect, a few days later, that the sounds of destruction had occurred in a rather linear fashion. It wasn't chaotic, with glass shattering and water spewing and bricks falling all at once; it was bricks falling, then window exploding, then door slamming: boom, boom, boom....

[Note: The storm came from the west-southwest, and the center of the track was just south of us. So the winds blew from the north, as if the tornado were folding everything into itself.]

Actually, let me take them one at a time. First it was the wind roaring. Not howling, but roaring. A circular roar that I thought sounded like a too-close helicopter. I've heard others say it sounded like a jet sitting over their house, and of course there is the freight train analogy. (One friend said, "It just sounded LOUD.")

We could hear it getting closer (louder), and then we heard glass shattering on the other side of the house. Tom said, "There went the back doors," because we have two sets of french doors that open onto the patio, and that would logically have been the first to go. Fortunately, we were mistaken; the sound was actually the storm door, the full panel of glass that shielded our front door. (Our neighbors on either side also lost their front storm doors, and I think the air pressure burst those doors instead of sucking out/blowing in the windows across the fronts/north sides of our houses.)

Next we heard/felt something happen on the roof, which I thought was going to leave a gaping hole over our living room. Turns out it was the roofing over the porch being pulled off, and our chimney being toppled. The porch has a flat roof, and its roofing and gutters were mostly gone. The columns on the east side of the house were askew, indicating that end of the flat roof had been lifted enough to shift the supports.

The chimney broke off right at the roofline, and it fell onto the driveway below. My Explorer took the brunt of the impact; it was bent such that the driver's door wouldn't open, and it had been pushed about two feet from where I had parked it. Either the bricks pushed it or the tornado lifted and dropped it, or maybe a little of both. The rear hatch was destroyed. Even the hydraulics were ripped out.

The bricks also landed on the front end of Tom's Subaru. A bench from the front porch had been slammed into the rear quarter panel, and half of the windows were shattered.

Typing on my phone is tricky, so I will publish this as it is and complete the description of the way things happened when I get back to a real keyboard.

--Jennifer
The new normal isn't shiny

the day time stood still, everything changed, and assorted other cliches

Wednesday, April 27, 2011, approximately 5:10 p.m. The power went out, and Tom and I could only hear the storm. With the TV on, James Spann (weather hero of north-central Alabama) was telling us about the storm's strength, track, and current location, but I don't recall being able to actually hear the winds until the power went out. At that point we sat side by side and waited to hear/feel how badly we were going to be hit.

Also I was on the phone. I was talking to my friend Meredith, who was in her house two doors down; more specifically, she and her 8-year-old daughter, Isabel, were surrounded by pillows in the closet at the center of the home, praying the tornado would miss us. I had told her that she was in the safest place she could be, that it was going to be scary for a few minutes, then it would be over and we would be fine. I remember her asking if I would mind repeating that to Isabel, who perhaps wasn't so sure her mom was correct in telling her they were going to be OK. I said those same words to Isabel, probably a few minutes after 5:00, then Mere took the phone back.

Intermittently I had been texting Mere, Jennifer (in Portland, Ore.), Kristy (in Charlotte, N.C.) and my mother (in Birmingham). I am so glad I spent part of those last few normal hours conversing with my loved ones about the status of things in Tuscaloosa, because now I have a textual record that helps me keep the timeline straight.

I clearly remember Mere asking me to please stay on the phone with her until the storm passed, and I agreed. But as soon as the power went out, I said, "I gotta go!" and hung up. In that moment, my ability to multitask vanished. All I could do was wait. And listen.

--Jennifer
My things will be shiny again someday!

limbs, cars, and security -- oh, my!

Limbs hauled away, Explorer totaled but not yet towed. Grandma's car has issues so taking to shop in B'ham tomorrow -- don't know what happens after that. Tom Land is staying at the house tonight because the National Guard is no longer stationed at the temporary entrance to the n'hood, and with no fences and much of the contents of our former garage stacked on the patio, he couldn't sleep away from home.

--Jennifer

direct hit?

I feel the need to clarify that what happened to us (and our house) was not a direct hit by an EF4 tornado. It was a sideswipe that was equivalent to a direct hit by a "normal" tornado -- the kind that tears off roofs and chimneys and uproots pine and oak trees and pulls AC units off their concrete slabs.

--Jennifer

feeling fortunate but very sad

Today I came back to my house by myself after dropping Tom off at work for a few hours. We are staying on campus, and he works across from Gordon-Palmer, so my route was down Hackberry, then right on Hargrove, and then left into The Downs, where we live (just before the intersection with 10th Ave.).

I KNOW how lucky I am to be alive and to still have a home to return to. But what saddened me this morning was that we have lost so much of Tuscaloosa. All those glorious trees and homes along Hargrove. Alumni and fans passing through for 60 years have driven past those same trees and homes. Even the apartments have been here for 40 or so years, and you can talk to alumni across generations who all lived/partied there. Gone. My uncle and aunt used to walk through my shady neighborhood when they were dating 30 years ago, and now there are only a few scraggly trees standing. And some of the homes are beyond repair.

We will rebuild our home and bounce back and move forward, but even those of us who didn't lose everything have lost an awful lot. I'm having to come to terms with it being OK to feel this sense of loss while knowing how lucky I am. It doesn't cheapen the losses of people who have lost everything for me to feel overwhelmed with sadness.

--Jennifer