After the Storm

As everyone knows by now, we had devastating storms come through Alabama on Wednesday. I have lived through lots of tornado warnings in my life, but I have never experienced anything like what happened on Wednesday. We were woken up at 5:30 a.m. by the sirens, so we turned on the TV. There were severe thunderstorms headed our way, with straight-line winds up to 100 mph. Our weather guru, James Spann, said those can be more dangerous and destructive than tornadoes. Luckily everything passed fairly quickly and our part of town managed to escape relatively unscathed. Other areas were not so lucky. I went on in to work, but it took John 2.5 hrs to get to his office because of all the trees down and lights out, only to realize that the power was out there. So he got his computer and went to pick Curran up from school because they were closing at 1:00 due to the threat of more bad weather that afternoon.

Luckily I had a workshop scheduled from 1-4, so I only had to cancel patients who were scheduled between 4 and 5, or I never would have been able to leave. The bad weather ended up not entering the Birmingham area until a little after 5, but I was glad to get out of there early that afternoon.

Here is a picture I got from a friend's Facebook page that was taken from the roof of the hospital where I work.

We went over to Chris and Craig's house around 2:00 because we do not have a "safe place" in our house. All of our rooms have windows, even our bathrooms. We watched the live coverage in horror as tornadoes destroyed parts of Tuscaloosa and Cullman. You could see all of the debris swirling around with the tornado. It was like something out of a movie. When the came into Birmingham, we packed up our supplies {flashlights, wine, snacks- necessities} and headed down to the basement. This was the first time in my life where I actually took "shelter." I guess I've just never been in a path close enough to a tornado to need to go to a safe place.

Craig had it all set up. He had a TV down there so we could keep watching the weather.

We kept Curran entertained with Baby Einstein and plenty of snacks.

Just eating some carrots to pass the time. 

{James Spann really does insist that you make your kids wear helmets while taking shelter, but of course C ripped this thing off 0.5 seconds after I took this picture. If we had really been in the direct path, though, I would have made her keep it on.}

These pictures are kind of light-hearted, but I don't mean to downplay the situation. It was very scary and intense as we didn't know exactly where the storm was headed. It ended up passing right past downtown Birmingham {where I work} and completely destroyed some neighborhoods north and west of town.

We stayed in the basement until is was obvious that we were in the clear. Even though we knew we would probably be safe, just watching the utter devastation occurring around our state was almost more than I could bear. It was very emotional to witness.

Here is a picture that my cousin took while he was helping clean up the wreckage.

This was another from someone's Facebook page, taken in Tuscaloosa.

Walking in to work on Thursday, it was an atmosphere like I've never seen. It was very quiet and empty, and small groups of people were huddled around recounting stories from the day before. I heard snippets of conversations as I walked by. I heard someone say "He knew he had lost his children, but then this morning he found out his wife had died, too." Can you imagine? Patients came in telling me one nightmarish story after another. One of my good friends works with a lady whose mother was killed. The photographer who has taken some pics of C just did a newborn session for a client, and the mother was killed in the storm, leaving her newborn son and husband behind. There are heart-wrenching stories like that all over our state {and other states in the Southeast}. It is amazing how lives can be changed in an instant. I am so grateful for our safety!