The Tuscaloosa News, by Staff

“ALBERTA IS GONE. I'VE LOST EVERYTHING.”

Staff Report

Muffled screams could be heard from a pile of debris that used to be an apartment complex at Arlington Square in Alberta on Wednesday.

Firefighters, police officers and Alberta residents stood atop the pile, digging with their hands, using chain saws to cut through planks and using floor jacks to lift the walls that had fallen on top of a University of Alabama student who was trapped several feet under the debris.

The woman yelled that she couldn't feel her legs.

They kept digging, but as night fell, her rescuers still had not been able to free her from the rubble. The tornado that hit Tuscaloosa Wednesday devastated the Alberta community. Few, if any, houses and buildings remained standing. Trees and power lines were strewn everywhere.

Cars were flipped over, stairwells were twisted and people were trapped in their homes, calling to first responders for help. People sifted through the remains of their homes looking for anything they could salvage.

The air was filled with the sounds of sirens, and people sobbing and yelling in search of family members. People laid blankets over the bodies of neighbors lying in the ruins of the destroyed homes.

First responders didn't attend to the dead. They were busy attending to the many injured and trying to rescue those who were still trapped.

Scores of people, many bleeding, limping and others being carried, fled Alberta for DCH Regional Medical Center

“I was in the bathroom in my house at 915 Alberta Drive when the tornado hit,” said Fred Jackson, 48, as he walked from Alberta toward DCH carrying the few possessions he had left.

“The earth went to moving,” he said. “Roots were pulling up. Everything was moving. The house is destroyed. We had to get out through a window. We're just trying to find cover before the next one hits.”

As people walked the streets, talking to people over cellphones, many kept repeating the same line: “Alberta is gone. I've lost everything.”

MACFARLAND BUSINESSES REDUCED TO RUBBLE

Businesses at the corner of McFarland Boulevard and 13th Street near DCH were destroyed by the tornado. Steak-Out, Big Lots, Full Moon Barbecue, Krispy Kreme and surrounding businesses were reduced to piles of rubble.

Emergency workers sifted through debris and called out to anyone who might be trapped.

Steak-Out manager Ellis Ball said that he and two other employees took shelter in the restaurant's cooler.

“We saw it spinning across the street. The next thing you know the building was crumbling down all around us. Then we just climbed out of the rubble,” he said.

“It happened too fast to be scared,” said Steak-Out driver Henry Nixon, who moved to Tuscaloosa after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. “This is exactly what New Orleans looked like, but on a smaller scale,” he said.

Sharon and Bruce Howard were eating at Full Moon with their children Rebecca, 11, and Tracy, 10, when the tornado hit. They were huddled in the restaurant's cooler with about a dozen employees when the building started shaking

“I grabbed them and held them to me, then the cooler collapsed on us,” she said. “It was such a relief when we saw people trying to get us out.”

Full Moon employees Carolyn Forkner and Sara Lynch were searching through Forkners destroyed car to find shoes for the Howards.

“This is like a nightmare, I just want to wake up,” said Forkner, who was still wearing a drive-thru headset as she surveyed the wreckage.

Emergency vehicles had a difficult time navigating through the hundreds of vehicles travelling west toward the hard-hit area. Most of the passengers took photos and hung out of the vehicle windows to get a look at the devastation. Some people walked through the wreckage, trying to reach people on cell phones, although service was spotty.

Many of them wept, running toward damaged businesses to look for people trapped in the rubble. Crowds lined the railroad bridge and hills near DCH Regional Medical Center to watch the scene, manyof them parking and walking from as far as the hospital.

Lafe Murray was driving to his home off Hargrove Road East around the time the tornado moved through central Tuscaloosa. He saw people stopped at the intersection of Skyland Boulevard East and Hargrove Road East.

“I turned around and saw a dark cloud dipping down and touching the ground. From the sides of it, two other funnels were whipping out at the sides,” he said. “It was terrifying.”

35TH STREET BUILDINGS LEVELED

The tornado leveled buildings on 35th Street between Interstate 359 and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard before moving to the heart of the city.

A Tamko Building Products warehouse off 35th Street was blown away and trees that once lined the street were gone. Tall transmission power lines lay across the street. An Alabama Power Co. substation was smashed, a sign that it would be a long time before crews could repair the damage.

About 30 Tamko employees huddled in the basement of the company's main facility as the tornado passed. None were injured, employees said after the storm.

Across the street, ABC Supply Co., which provides roofing supplies, was nearly leveled as steel beams were bent. Ron Fawcett, store manager, sent his employees home about 30 minutes before the tornado, leaving himself shortly after. He returned to the store after the storm, and little was salvageable, he said.

“My trucks are destroyed,” he said. “The whole place is gone.”

Traveling east on 35th Street across Kauloosa Avenue, there was severe damage to the Tuscaloosa Environmental Services and Cintas facilities. A train sat idle as power poles lay across the track.

Just west of the industrial area, where Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard turns into Moody Swamp Road, trees and power poles blocked the road. On Willow Lane, a neighborhood street, a tree fell on a house, but the tornado skipped over the houses as it tore over a creek towards town.

Mary Burl and her adult son watched the storm approach.

“(My son) said there it is, right there,” she said. “We ran inside to the bathroom, and I got in the bathtub.”

Her house and the street were mostly spared.

“It had to jump over us,” she said. “We were blessed.”

LANDMARK P&P PRODUCE FLATTENED

For more than 40 years, P&P Produce on Greensboro Avenue has served the residents in the Rosedale community. Wednesday night, melons and vegetables lying in a pile of flattened rubble was all that remained of the landmark neighborhood grocery.

The business had closed because of severe weather early Wednesday afternoon, so no one was inside.

Nearby, homes were missing roofs and walls. Many houses were buried beneath fallen trees. Some trees had sliced through roofs. On blocked streets nearby, the destruction was even worse.

“Rosedale Court is gone. It looks like a war zone,” said George Weatherspoon of the housing project a few blocks to the east. “It looks like three to four units are all that is left standing,” he said as he walked out of the area. “Rosedale Court is just leveled.”

Sirens from ambulances, fire trucks, police cars and rescue vehicles wailed constantly through the area. At least seven seriously injured people were sent to hospitals early in the rescue effort, according to one firefighter. But he said the search for the injured continued.

Meanwhile, rumors about people still missing swirled through the neighborhood.

Katherine Honnicutt, who lives on 26th Street near the heavily damaged Rosedale Baptist Church, said she heard the tornado coming and threw a mattress over her bedridden father, who couldn't be moved from his bed. She said she had enough time to to make sure he had an opening so he could breathe before she and other family members dashed to a closet for shelter.

“I lived here for 32 years, and this is the worst I have ever seen,” she said. “I was standing at the door and saw it coming.”

Honnicutt said the wind roared over her home, “It sounded like a tornado as it was going over.”

A power pole fell across her side yard, but she said she was stunned when her brother called her to the front of the home after the tornado passed.

A silo-like steel cylinder, more than a story high, had been blown from a lot across the road and landed on the hood of her car, which was parked alongside the house. She said the car was not insured.

Meanwhile, the roof of her modest home was partially peeled away. A backyard shed was gone.

Cammile Ison, who lives on the west end of 26th Street, in an area abutting the interstate, said she opened the door to the storm and the wind almost blew the door off.

“I couldn't shut it. Outside, everything was just flying in front of me.”

She said she told her kids to take cover and sought cover herself. She said trees were down in her yard but she said her home did not appear to be damaged.

Up the street, metal roofing dangled from Rosedale Baptist Church and farther south on Greensboro, the Salvation Army building that houses the organization's thrift store looked as though it had been hit by a bomb. Every window was blown out and the roof was damaged.

Throughout the area, cars that had not been crushed by trees had their windows blown out. A few were flipped over.

As dusk arrived, fear of another tornado gripped stunned residents of the neighborhood.

“They say another tornado is heading this way,” Honnicutt said as she hurried to check on her ill father.

FOREST LAKE NEIGHBORHOOD DEVASTATED

A heavy feeling of uncertainty and fear hung in the air, mixed with the smell of natural gas and twisted pine in the neighborhoods south of 15th Street in the immediate wake of Wednesday's tornado.

Other than the faint beep of heavy equipment moving debris from Forest Lake Avenue, the area was silent.

Breaking that silence was 21-year-old Brandon Reid, moving from crushed home to crushed home along the street, calling out for people inside, looking to help anyone he could find.

“I really don't know what I'm doing,” he said, his voice shaking as he moved through the rubble of a fallen home.

“I just know that Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself and I know I would want help if I were trapped inside my house.”

Joseph Grogan and his roommate, Austin Johnson, live in the 1700 block of 4th Avenue. They saw the twister moving from behind their home headed from Hackberry Lane toward Highway 82.

“I saw it coming right for us and it was spitting debris everywhere,” Grogan said. “I could hear stuff hitting all around me outside and I ran inside.”

Grogan and Johnson ran into the bathroom of their small house and ducked into the bathtub.

“It came through and I was in the bathtub and the window shattered next to me and Joseph told me to cover my face,” Johnson said.

After the twister passed over their home, Grogan emerged in time to see the tornado sitting on top of a house across the street.

“I came out on the front porch and saw it spinning right on that house,” Grogan said pointing to a tree that had fallen right through the middle of the home.

“It just sat there too. Like it was chilling. It sat there a long time before it moved out of sight.

Workers from the Tuscaloosa Department of Transportation began removing trees and debris from the area immediately after the storm left.

Around 8 p.m. Wednesday, one TDOT worker, who asked not to be named, said they had pulled at least three people from homes.

Lora Clark, 73, has lived in her home on Lake Avenue since 1973. She was asleep as the tornado passed over her home and awoke to see a horrific image outside her back door.

Gazing across the small pond at the back of her home, all that could be seen were crumbled houses and trees snapped in half.

Though her home is still standing, much of the roof was ripped off and her car is damaged. Windows at the back of her home were also shattered.

Clark said she is more worried about the neighbors across the pond.

“There's not much I can do about my home,” she said. “I just look over there and feel like what happened to me is not very important.”

Sharon Roberts lives directly across the pond from Clark. The house sustained significant damage, with much of its roof ripped off completely.

Roberts said she saw the storm coming and took cover in her bedroom.

“My brother-in-law called and said it was coming straight at us and I looked out the window and saw it hovering over the lake,” she said

“It was huge and all you could see was black and it was just spitting trees and things everywhere.”

Around 7:30 p.m., Roberts was still waiting to hear from her daughter who lives in an apartment with her boyfriend on Veterans Memorial Parkway near University Mall, one of the hardest hit areas.

Compiled by staff writers Jamon Smith, Stephanie Taylor, Adam Jones, Patrick Rupinski and Wayne Grayson.

By Jason Morton

TUSCALOOSA | At least 15 people are dead and more than 100 injured in the wake of a devastating tornado that hit the city late Wednesday afternoon, destroying thousands of homes, businesses and other structures.

That was the sobering message a stoic Mayor Walt Maddox delivered Wednesday night amid the aftermath of a series of storms that killed 72 people in four states.

“This afternoon, Tuscaloosa was devastated by a tornado which has created death and destruction across our city,” Maddox began. “To my fellow citizens who are hurting tonight, in the days, weeks and months ahead, our city will rise to meet these challenges by dedicating every available resource.”

Among those resources was a host of emergency powers temporarily granted Maddox by a unanimous vote of the City Council. All but one member — Councilman Kip Tyner, whose District 5 was among the hardest hit — was in attendance.

Parts of Alberta in Tyner’s district were destroyed, with at least one apartment complex reduced to shambles.

So, too, was Rosedale Court on 10th Avenue, where at least one person was killed.

McFarland Boulevard and areas around its intersection with 15th Street and Veterans Memorial Parkway resemble war zones. Businesses, like Krispy Kreme, that were considered institutions have been erased from this city’s map.

Recovering from the widespread destruction — the tornado left a mile-wide swath through the city, from the southwest corner to its northeast tip — will take every resource the city has and then some, Maddox said.

“Our infrastructure has been decimated by today’s tornado,” Maddox said. “We’re talking about a matter of months in dealing with this recovery.”

Statewide, at least 58 people died, including 11 in Jefferson County. Eleven deaths were reported in Mississippi, two in Georgia and one in Tennessee.

Storms came through the state earlier in the day, hitting parts of West Alabama hard, including Berry in Fayette County and Coaling in Tuscaloosa County.

The tornado crushed the city’s Curry Building, where the city’s Environmental Services Department is housed. Those services are inoperable.

The Tuscaloosa Police Department’s East precinct in Alberta was damaged, as was Tuscaloosa Fire and Rescue’s Station No. 4.

But the lives lost and uprooted were the chief concern of city officials.

“Of course, the real recovery will be seen in the relentless spirit of our citizens,” Maddox said. “Throughout Tuscaloosa, citizens are reaching out to each other, demonstrating that our strength and our faith will overcome all, even in this dark hour. 

“We’re going to have to have the help of others to make it through.”

As of Wednesday night, the Belk Activity Center and University of Alabama Rec Center had been confirmed as shelters. UA officials stressed that the Rec Center was for students who are homeless, not those who are without power.

The University of Alabama and the University of West Alabama will be closed today in the wake of Wednesday’s storms.

Neither school had made a decision when they would resume classes.

UA spokeswoman Cathy Andreen said Wednesday night that “essential personnel should report to work as directed by their supervisors. Any UA employee who has experienced personal hardships as a result of the tornado should notify their supervisors.”

UWA spokeswoman Betsy Compton said that though the school did not receive any structural damage, the school is closing because power outages are widespread and the storm impacted a widespread area.

There are plenty of people without power. At least 83,000 homes were without power in Tuscaloosa as of 9 p.m., Maddox said. Across West Alabama, that number swelled to 144,000.

Statewide, 370,000 were without electricity. Tuscaloosa city schools will be closed today and Friday.

City school officials said that of the 24 schools in the city system, only two — Alberta Elementary and University Place Elementary/ Middle School — sustained serious damage.

Lesley Bruinton, spokeswoman for the Tucaloosa City School System, said the Central Office and all school campuses would open on Monday.

Tuscaloosa County Schools will be closed today.

Maddox said Gov. Robert Bentley has pledged the full support of the state, including 1,400 members of the Alabama National Guard, who have been deployed across the state.

“This is a difficult situation for the state but we are responding,” Bentley said Wednesday.

“We were most saddened by the loss of life and those who have been injured in these tornadoes.”

President Barack Obama has declared a state of emergency in Alabama and ordered federal aid to assist in the recovery. The National Guard had deployed units to Tuscaloosa on Wednesday night that were expected to arrive before daybreak today, Maddox said, adding that dozens of roads were impassable.

DCH Regional Medical Center is calling for help, too.

Hospital officials are expected to call on the Alabama Emergency Management Agency to help with a temporary, mobile hospital.

DCH missed most of the severe damage, but was running on emergency diesel generators Wednesday.

A nearby power substation was hit, and the connection to the hospital was severed, said DCH spokesman Brad Fisher. Engineers told him that the building would be running on emergency power for the near future. All necessary functions of the hospital can run on the emergency power, and the diesel tanks are refillable.

“Tragedy and destruction has encompassed our city, but it will not conquer us,” Maddox said.

“Rather, it will inspire us to demonstrate our patience, our faith and our confidence that a new day will certainly dawn.”

By Jason Morton

TUSCALOOSA | Gov. Robert Bentley walked the streets of his hometown on Thursday, followed by a small entourage.

He shook his head and squinted his eyes over what was left of the homes, businesses and lives at the intersection of 15th Street and McFarland Boulevard.

“It hurts to see your hometown like this,” Bentley said. “Today, I feel like not just the governor of the state of Alabama, but a Tuscaloosan.”

The city's death toll has reached 42, and the number of Tuscaloosa residents injured in Wednesday's massive tornado, what some say is the largest storm to hit the city — and possibly the state — is at more than 900.

With 42 confirmed deaths and people still missing, the has sadly topped a 1904 twister that killed 36 and another in 1932 that left 37 dead.

Alabama emergency management officials in a news release early this morning said the state had 210 confirmed deaths.

“This is going to be a very long process,” Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox said. “There will be areas of the city that will be hurting for a very long time.”

Bentley pledged the full support of state resources, including the Alabama National Guard, and said he would boost the initial number of troops from 500 to 1,000 headed for Tuscaloosa.

“However many troops we need in Tuscaloosa, we're going to send them,” he said.

Bentley was one of many state and federal legislators to speak at a news conference on the edge of Midtown Village, the open-air shopping mall that sustained damage but is still standing.

Behind them was the wreckage of the businesses, stores and homes that was left in the wake of what some are speculating was an EF-5 tornado that hit Tuscaloosa and much of West Alabama on Wednesday. But the people who made their living here, those who lived here, will get the support they need, officials said.

“I want to reassure the people that we will do everything we can on the federal level,” said U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, who also calls Tuscaloosa home. “I've never seen (damage) like this — from Birmingham to Tuscaloosa — and it hurts.

“They're probably in a state of shock now, and they need help. And they'll get help.”

Shelby was one of many who flew around the state with Bentley on Thursday. The senator arrived in Alabama with the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Craig Fugate. President Barack Obama, will arrive here today.

Death toll reaches 42

Thursday Maddox said the death toll had reached 37 with 26 from inside the city limits. The remaining 11 were killed in the police jurisdiction. By 9 a.m. today the number had risen to 42 dead and more than 900 injured, the city reported on their Twitter account.

And University of Alabama President Robert Witt confirmed Thursday that two students were among those killed in Tuscaloosa.

Carson Tinker, a walk-on long snapper on the UA football team from Murfreesboro, Tenn., was hospitalized with a fractured wrist and concussion. Ashley Harrison, a member of the Phi Mu sorority from Dallas who was in the house with Tinker when the tornado hit, was killed.

“Carson Tinker was at his home with several others and was right in the middle of the storm,” head football coach Nick Saban told ESPN. “His house was completely destroyed, he was thrown probably 50 yards from the house ... was pretty beat up, but is stable and will be fine.”

But none of the dead or injured were concentrated in any particular area. They all were scattered throughout the 4-mile path that stretched from southwest Tuscaloosa to its northeast tip.

City emergency crews have shifted to search-and-rescue mode as areas of the Tuscaloosa still remain under rubble.

Additionally, East Tuscaloosa is running out of water.

The water towers on Crescent Ridge Road and near the Veterans Affairs Medical Center on Loop Road are empty, Maddox said.

“This is going to create potential water outages for East Tuscaloosa,” Maddox said.

The mayor has issued an executive order to all city residents to conserve water. The reason, he said, is to help maintain water pressure throughout the entire system.

“This is vitally important. Not only is it a health and sanitary issue, but it's also a public safety one,” the mayor said, noting that firefighting efforts will be impossible in parts of the city without an adequate level of water pressure.

Maddox also issued a boil water notice for residents east of McFarland Boulevard and south of the Black Warrior River up to Buttermilk Road.

Beginning Thursday night, the Police Department and the Alabama National Guard enforced a curfew for the areas affected by the tornado. The curfew will last until 6 a.m. today and will be enforced from around 8 p.m. today to 6 a.m. Saturday.

Violating the curfew is a misdemeanor offense.

Staff writers Dana Beyerle, Brian Reynolds and Cecil Hurt contributed to this report. Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.

By Wayne Grayson

As scores of her Alberta neighbors walked slowly in a mass exodus west along University Boulevard on Thursday morning, Brenda Gibson stood staring across the street at what was once her home.

Looking south, a small white house stood out among the waves of broken trees and splintered wood, standing but leaning over, its front porch broken in half.

“It’s demolished,” Gibson said. “I’m still in shock. I’m like ‘Pinch me. Wake me up.’ This just can’t be true.”

All that Gibson has left, like so many others in Alberta, are the clothes she salvaged from her home, along with a bottle of grape soda and some snacks she pulled from the rubble of a convenience store.

“We don’t have any food or water. After going through our house we were walking up to the Piggly Wiggly because the police were supposed to have water there when we saw the people here,” she said

More than a dozen people had gathered atop the mound of rubble and were desperately digging through the debris, hoping to salvage drinks and food before getting back to their destroyed homes or continuing to walk west, away from the death and destruction.

“I was just trying to get my grandkids something to eat,” Gibson said. She has four grandchildren who live with her.

As she spoke, Gibson’s eyes remained on what was left of her home. She spoke quietly, her eyes glassy with tears as she recalled taking cover in the hallway of her house before emerging to see the sea of destruction around her.

“I pulled two dead bodies from a home after it happened,” Gibson said. “I found an elderly lady and a three-year-old baby. After that my body and mind have been in shock and to try and describe what I’m feeling — I can’t

“I thank God that I’m alive, but to see those two bodies was very painful.”

Further west down University Boulevard, Michelle Lancaster, 51, walked slowly under the weight of a large black trash bag containing all of her belongings.

A tree fell through and destroyed her home of five years while she took cover in its hallway. Lancaster was walking with family Thursday morning toward the West End, at least five miles away, where her daughter lives. But while she stopped to gather her things together, she became separated from the rest of her group.

“All I can think about is what am I going to do? What is my next move?” she said. “It’s been hard.”

Linda Anderson, 46, walked a few hundred yards behind Lancaster. She and her two friends, Douglas Taylor, 56, and Dwight Woods, 53, each pulled a suitcase behind them containing what she could salvage from the home she has owned for 21 years on 23rd Avenue.

Anderson said she took cover in the house’s basement and saw the twister coming through a window before the storm blew the window out, filling the air with “nothing but noise.”

“I have a shell of a home; just four walls,” Anderson said.

And even with so little left, Anderson said it took her hours to leave her home and then the neighborhood.

“As long as we’re alive,” she said. “I don’t care about the material things. My heart is bleeding for the people that lost their lives here.”

By Jamon Smith

TUSCALOOSA | Police cars blocked vehicle access to 10th Avenue at the intersection of 10th and Hargrove Road on Thursday.

They said no unauthorized vehicles were allowed to go down 10th Avenue beyond that point, behind which lies the ruins of Rosedale Court.

“The place was destroyed,” said Fredrick Bank, a 40-year-old resident of Apartment Park, a development across the street from Rosedale that was also destroyed in Wednesday's tornado.

“I was at a store when the storm hit,” he said. “I've been at my place today salvaging whatever I can. I salvaged some food and game systems. I'm going to stay with my sister on the West Side now.”

Bank was one of hundreds of people who walked down 10th Avenue in front of Rosedale Court on Thursday, salvaging whatever they could from their ruined homes or just walking aimlessly with no idea where to go.

Trees, power lines and power poles lay toppled on homes and streets surrounding Rosedale Court.

About half of Rosedale Court itself — as well as much of the area around it — was obliterated.

“It's extensive damage to the southern portion of the site,” said Ralph Ruggs, executive direction of the Tuscaloosa Housing Authority. “I'd say the southern part of it totally destroyed.”

“So far, it's been reported that we have three deaths at Rosedale and first responders are searching the houses for other people,” he said. “I heard there were about 30 people injured here of various degrees. We're working with social service agencies to provide shelter and other services to the people here and we've relocated families to other public housing facilities as vacancies become available.”

Displaced residents were walking along 10th Avenue Thursday carrying suitcases and bags filled with items they were able to salvage.

Johnnie Robertson, who lives near Moody Swamp off 35th Street in west Tuscaloosa, said that most of the damage was structural in her neighborhood. She spent three hours driving through Tuscaloosa to get to her son's home in Circlewood after she was unable to reach him by phone Wednesday night.

“I just cried, looking at all of the devastation,” she said. “We were blessed in my area.”

Her brother visited Rosedale Court on Wednesday to check on friends and help with rescue efforts.

“He saw a man walking down the street, in shock, carrying a baby that had died,” she said.

Not every resident of Rosedale Court was picking through the debris Thursday looking for their possessions.

Some were looking for lost family members.

Robbie Thomas, a 26-year-old resident of Rosedale Court, said that she, her mother, daughter, niece and nephew were outside when they saw the tornado touch down.

All of them ran in the house, except her nephew.

“My nephew was in the red truck,” Thomas said, standing atop the rubble of her residence, crying. “We can't find him. He was trying to park the truck. He's 15.

“We told him to come in, but the wind blew the door shut and that was the last time we saw him.”

“My mom had her head busted open with a brick and her arm. We saw everything fall apart and we were buried. We unburied ourselves. We're just trying to find him.”

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