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My trip through town today
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Well I finally went to town today. The news said this morning that there were only four families that had to use the shelters last night which is a tribute to everyone that reached out a hand to take a complete stranger in. You never know what kind of town you live in or around until a catastrophe happens. The last one was 10 yrs ago, another Tornado.
I came up I-65 north from Montgomery and got off at exit 179, at first everything looked perfectly normal. Manicured lawns around the businesses, flowers signs were perfectly straight and neat. The Bass Pro Shop looked fine, as did the rest of the stores, gas stations, hotels etc for the first 1.50 miles.
I passed Lowe's on my right, I started to see bits of debris and trash littering the sides of the road, which isn't normal for our town as we use prisoners on chain gangs to keep the roadsides clean. The city has a full time landscaping department that keeps the grass, flowers and different plants looking like they came from a nursery that day. Then I went down the gentle rolling grade that goes past the movie theater and the damage started showing, getting progressively worse the closer I got to Wal-Marts and Kmart. Windows were blown out, signs were down, and then I saw the roof off Russell's Do it Center, The front facade was gone from the Office Depot, it looked like a giant fist had smashed it ripping off the entire front. I looked at Wal-Mart and saw the front of it destroyed, air conditioning units scatted in the parking lot along side cars that looked as if some giant playful child had gotten angry and tossed them down, leaving them flipped upside down, and scattered all over the parking lot. Peoples clothing hung tattered from the sign that once belonged to Wal-Marts. Power lines lying like huge snakes waiting to strike, some tangled so much that they looked like balls of steel. Huge steel Light poles bent into pretzel shapes. A 2x4 stuck out of a brick wall at one of the banks as if it belonged there as the brick masons had laid the brick around it. Wooden telephone poles snapped off like toothpicks with the yard sale signs still stapled to them reminding us of what things were like the day before the Tornado changed everything.
Rumpled steel siding and roofing littered the sides of the road some stacked up higher than I could see over. Small storage buildings in swimming pools, floating like weird boats. There were blue, green and black tarps over homes and business's roofs, plywood replaced windows that shop keepers normally have their wares proudly displayed in. Bobcats pushed the debris of people’s lives and memories to the side of the road like so much garbage for the City crews to pick up.
The Kmart shopping center was as if a herd of beast had trampled though it, not avoiding anything that was in their way. The $5.00 car wash and Sonic looked like a bomb had gone off and blew them to pieces. One of the banks windows were gone, shattered into oblivion as if someone had used them for target practice all up and down the entire 10 stories. I saw shocked unbelieving looks on the people around me in other cars as we waited for a truck to back into the alley beside the Ford Dealer. New cars and trucks splattered with leaves, grass, and pieces of metal. Doors caved in as if they survived a side collision with something big.
It looked like a giant beehive, people working everywhere, the sun bouncing off their hard hats as they strung new electrical, cable and phone lines. Clean up crew knocking down buildings and houses that were so damaged, they were too dangerous to leave standing.
Alabama Power, Telephone, and City crews were out in force, working around the clock and managed to get all the power on by 6:00 pm last night. Then I saw the track of the tornado. It started about 5 miles from my house on country road 4, ruining the recreation and sports center, jumping over U.S Highway 31 and U.S. 82 and landing in a neighborhood that was behind the bowling alley and Big Lots. It made its way on a diagonal line and hit the places that were the most populated on a Sunday afternoon in a small town just before Sunday evening church services. The Mayor was visibly shaken during the press interview, his Mom's house was wiped out, she was at Church. The Mayor made it clear to everyone that there would not be any looting or vandals. Everyone has to produce a license to work in any area so the swindlers and scam artist don’t rip off of the people who have already lost so much. The 7:00 pm to 7:00 am curfew continues. The State county and local police are a strong force, with wary eyes watching everyone and everything.
The police are stationed at the entrances to each neighborhood, requiring your ID to prove that you had a right to be there. The damage reminded me of New Orleans, 9th ward just on a smaller scale. People tread carefully through the remains of what was home looking for those irreplaceable pictures and whatnots, tears streaking dirty faces, the pain they feel a visible weight that is almost too much to bear. A child’s teddy bear stuck in the remains of a snapped off oak tree, the ribbon around his neck fluttering in the now gentle winds. An unharmed high chair sits on a field of grass next to the church.
The hopelessness of the ninth ward isn’t present here. There is a different demeanor if you look at the man cleaning up the roofing and tree limbs out of his yard, the woman looking through what once was her kitchen. You can see a steely resolve in the way the man moved. I could almost hear him saying, "We will be back.”
Tags: Tornado Damage Truckers Alabama Power People
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