Tuscaloosa

It has now been two weeks since Alabama was hit by a series of tornadoes. I can’t believe that much time has already passed. But, as they say, time flies. I heard on the news this morning that the tornado count from Wednesday, April 27 is now at 28. A few smaller category tornadoes will probably be added to the count before it’s all said and done.

This past Saturday, my brother Justin and I went down to Tuscaloosa. I was supposed to have gone down the Saturday before, but since there was no power and Tuscaloosa had been hit worse than the Huntsville area, I decided it would be best to wait another week before going.

The reason for the trip was to pick up some dining room chairs that I bought from my sorority house. The Theta house is doing some remodeling and as a result is buying new furniture in some areas. They sold the old furniture and I bought a couple of the old dining rooms chairs to have mainly for sentimental reasons. I currently have no idea where I’m going to put them in my much loved yet small house.

I always take a lesser known exit off the interstate going into town so as to avoid a lot of the traffic on McFarland Boulevard. If you know me well then you know I’m not a big fan of lots of traffic and this particular exit is the one I used all through college so I’m rather partial to it I guess you could say. The road I take into town goes though Alberta City which was hit especially hard and as a result, we ended up having to turn around because the road was still closed.

The road we took in was Veteran’s Memorial which turns into 15th Street once it crosses McFarland; so, we were forced to see all the tornado damage in the heart of the city which was really something I wanted to avoid. 15th was closed as well; but Justin grabbed my phone and took some pictures around the intersection as we drove by. Over 30 people lost their lives in Tuscaloosa that day. This city as well as all other communities across Alabama is still healing. As mentioned in my last post, the pictures really don’t do it justice. The damage is so much more heartbreaking and devastating up close and in person. It’s really hard to put into words the absolute ruin we saw that was once a thriving part of a city we love.

These cars were apparently totaled in the storm.

You can't tell much from this photo, but they were all beat up pretty badly.