January 23,2012

Going to bed the night before we knew there would be a very good chance of severe weather.  We all made sure to have our alerts turned on and be prepared for anything.  But honestly I do not think anyone could ever prepare as much as would be needed to survive a tornado that hits your house.  The sirens began going off at 3:00 am, my iMap Weather Radio went off with a vengeance.  I laid in bed waiting for the storm to get closer but I did not gather my precious belongings and things we would need to survive if it hit our house.  Why did I not do this? because I am like everyone else and think, It will not hit us.  This time it did not hit us and we were ever so lucky but others were not.  Over 150 homes were destroyed, 170 damaged, 2 people lost their lives, and people lost their whole lifes worth of belongings.  At some point I heard James Spann say the storm was heading to Wal-Mart from 79, well Wal-Mart is practically in our back yard.  I grabbed the boys out of bed and we went to the hall.  Not sure what would have happened to us had it hit.  Lucky for us, it was heading toward the Wal-Mart about 2 miles up the parkway.  Once I realized it wasn’t coming for us, I put the boys back to bed and actually went back to bed myself.  Then i heard the neighborhood we used to live in was leveled.  I jumped out of bed crying and went to the living room.  Our neighbors there were wonderful to us, one elderly couple especially.  It was like having grandparents next door.We haven’t been to see them in quite a while and I was completely sick to my stomach that they were gone.  Later that day, I found out they were ok, it hadn’t hit their section but it did demolish about 12 houses at the entrance to the neighborhood.  The pictures from it are terrible.  This one in particular:

This really hit me hard.  We lived there for 2.5 years, built our house from the ground up.  I was part of this community.  All the while I’m thinking we could still be living there.  When the tornados hit Tuscaloosa it upset me but not like this did, this was too close to home.  Then I found out a neighborhood in our school district was hit and demolished 15 homes of our students and one belonging to our AP at the Primary School.  Again, too close to home.  Later on in the day they released the name of the 16 year old who had been killed in the tornado- Christina.  She was a member of our church, I grew up seeing her on Sundays, her parents heavily involved in church and saw her dad everyday when I worked at the YMCA.  Too close to home again!  This time I had ties to the tornado devastation, this time it could have been us.  Next time, I am going to do my best to be prepared becuase believe me in Alabama there will be a next time.