tornado special edition

Wednesday, May 4, 2011 Serving the University of Alabama since 1894 Vol. 117, Issue 120

A LONG ROAD TO RECOVERY

ONLIN

E View stories, photos, video, an interactive timeline, and a damage map online at cw.ua.eduProfessors cope with lost homes Video: Walt Maddox speaks on recovery Slideshow of student-submitted photos

CW | Drew HooverThe April 27 tornado passed directly through the Forest Lake neighborhood, leaving nothing but scattered rubble where many houses once stood. In this photo, only the cinder block outline of a house remains.

Tuscaloosa looks to rebuild Relief efforts mobilize across the county

By Stephen WalkerStaff Reporter

[email protected]

Supplies and donations continue to pour in for victims of the deadly tornado that destroyed parts of Tuscaloosa on Wednesday, April 27. Organizations such as the Red Cross and United Way have seen a continuous flow of donations into relief funds since shortly after the disas-ter happened. “We did a telethon on ABC

33/40 a few nights after the disaster and raised $500,000 in just three hours,” Red Cross spokeswoman Suzanne Horsley said. The money received by the Red Cross will be used to pro-vide basic necessities to those affected by the storm. “The Red Cross provides relief to those in immediate need,” she said. “We provide food, a safe place to stay, cloth-ing and other basic needs.”

CW | Kelsey SteinVolunteers drive down Crescent Ridge Road in Holt, distributing food, water and other necessities to residents.

See DONATIONS, page 3

By Jonathan ReedManaging Editor

[email protected]

Shortly after 5 p.m. Wednesday, April 27, the face of Tuscaloosa was dramatically changed. An EF-4 tornado, with winds upwards of 190 mph, cut a gash six miles long and half a mile wide through the middle of the city, stretching from the Rosedale housing project near I-359 through the neighbor-hoods of Alberta and Holt. As of Tuesday morning, city officials confirmed that 40 people in the Tuscaloosa area were killed, though some offi-cials expect that number to rise as more areas are searched. The storm system also hit Birmingham, Huntsville, Cullman and other commu-nities in Alabama, as well as Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Mississippi. The tornado demolished homes and businesses from Rosedale through Forest Lake, 15th Street, Alberta and Holt before continuing for another 80 miles and hitting Birmingham. As residents pick up the pieces, the city looks ahead to a recovery that will take months and years, not days.

“Beyond a nightmare”

UA senior James Fowler,

former president of the Student Government Assosication, was at the Delta Kappa Epsilon house on University Boulevard when the tornado hit. Fowler watched as the tornado formed on the other side of Bryant-Denny Stadium, and then saw

the destruction afterward on 15th Street. “You can see clear from the Wendy’s on 15th to Midtown Village,” he said Wednesday night. “There’s nothing there. The trees and the buildings are all gone.”

On 15th Street and McFarland Boulevard, the tornado leveled restaurants and businesses familiar to UA students. That night, word spread quickly that Milo’s Hamburgers, Full Moon

Photo courtesy of Houston Foreman Furniture and debris line 13th Street after the devestating April 27 tornado.

See AFTERMATH, page 2

2 Wednesday, May 4, 2011 SPECIAL EDITION The Crimson White

The Crimson White is the community news-paper of The University of Alabama. The Crimson White is an editorially free newspa-per produced by students. The University of Alabama cannot influence editorial decisions and editorial opinions are those of the editorial board and do not rep-resent the official opinions of the University. Advertising offices of The Crimson White are on the first floor, Student Publications Building, 923 University Blvd. The advertis-ing mailing address is P.O. Box 2389, Tuscaloosa, AL 35403-2389. The Crimson White (USPS 138020) is published four times weekly when classes are in session during Fall and Spring Semester except for the Monday after Spring Break and the Monday after Thanksgiving, and once a week when school is in session for the summer. Marked calendar provided. The Crimson White is provided for free up

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EDITORIAL STAFF

• Victor Luckerson, editor-in-chief, [email protected]• Jonathan Reed, managing edi-tor, [email protected]• Brandee Easter, print produc-tion editor• Will Tucker, news editor, [email protected]• Hannah Mask, assistant news editor• Kelsey Stein, lifestyles editor

• Jason Galloway, sports editor • Tony Tsoukalas, assistant sports editor • Tray Smith, opinions editor• Jasmine Cannon, reporter • John Davis, reporter • Stephen Dethrage, reporter • William Evans, reporter • Taylor Holland, reporter • Katherine Martin, reporter• Amanda Sams, reporter

• Patty Vaughan, reporter • Stephen Walker, reporter • Adam Greene, chief copy editor • Parker White, copy editor • Emily Johnson, design editor • Drew Hoover, photo editor • Megan Smith, assistant photo editor • Katie Bennett, photographer • Mitchell Hughes, photographer

• John Michael Simpson, pho-tographer • Caitlin Trotter, photographer• Brian Connell, web editor• Daniel Roth, multimedia editor • Marion Steinberg, community manager, [email protected]• Wesley Vaughn, assistant com-munity manager• Malcolm Cammeron, commu-nity engagement team staff

The Crimson White would like to thank the following for providing shelter, electricity and food to the editorial staff during the past week:

Brandee Easter, the Hawkins family, the Mayfi eld family and the Offi ce of Student Media professional staff

DCH weathers storm safelyBy Stephen Walker

Staff [email protected]

“Most of it happened all at once,” recalls Brad Fisher, communication director for DCH Health System, of the tornado that came within mere yards of hitting the main building of Tuscaloosa’s larg-est hospital. “There’s a whole playbook that we go through in order to prepare for disasters like this.” Although the hospital is pre-pared to respond to the after-math of a tornado or other disaster hitting the area, it rarely has to prepare to take a direct hit from it. “You have to put in place a plan to handle operations if certain parts of your property are compromised, which ours were,” he said. Just a short time before the deadly, category EF-4 tornado plowed through Tuscaloosa, leaving behind little more than debris, Fisher and other hos-pital administrators sat in the hospital’s central command center, watching the weather and constructing a plan in case the tornado should become a threat to the hospital. “We were watching [ABC 33/40 meteorologist] James Spann, just like everyone else was,” he said. “We were expect-ing the tornado to bypass Tuscaloosa, just like everyone else did.” Fisher recalled the exact moment when he realized the tornado was going to pose a direct threat to the hospital. “All of the sudden, it became clear that not only was there going to be a tornado that would create mass casualties, but also that it was coming directly for us,” he said. At that point, the hospital began preparing for a major catastrophe. “Patients were taken out of their rooms into the hallways, covered with blankets, and told to look away from any win-dows,” Fisher said. “We ran around the building, getting visitors and patients away from the windows.” Fisher said he remembered little about the moment the tornado came within a stone’s throw from the main hospital building. “I didn’t hear or see it,” he said. “Everyone says that it sounds like a train as it passes, but I don’t remember that.”

The next thing he remem-bers is running through the hospital, checking to see what damage had been done and if anyone was injured. “I ran out to see if those in the cafeteria were OK,” he said. “I heard crying, whimper-ing and cursing. I heard people crying who were hiding under tables and scared to death.” After the tornado passed, administrators begin to assess the damages. “Up on the sixth and sev-enth floors, we lost glass in six or seven rooms that imploded outward, not inward,” Fisher said. “The two electrical sub-stations and main line running to the hospital were damaged. Another problem is that we didn’t have water. Our water supply was hit.” Miraculously, not a single patient, visitor or hospital staff member was injured. Even though the tornado had passed and no one had been injured, the minutes following

the tornado’s damage were the virtual calm before the storm. “The first visitors were the walking wounded,” he said. “They brought themselves in. In a situation like this, ambu-lances take a while to get to the victims and get back to the hos-pital.” In hours following, the hospi-tal dealt with the most visitors ever on a single night. “We had scores of people show up just because there was a rumor that there was another storm coming,” Fisher said. “So we had all these people show up at the same time. Some were injured, some weren’t, some came just because it was the only place that was standing.” That night, the emergency room treated approximately 800 storm victims, he said. Around 100 of them were admitted, 13 of whom were placed in the intensive care unit. Of the six deaths, three were adults and three were infants. “At the DCH emergency

room, 200 visitors a day is a busy day,” he said. “In one night, we saw and treated over 800.” Search-and-rescue teams have recovered few survivors since the night of the storm, he said. “To my knowledge, just one person has been brought in,” he said. “It was a fellow who got trapped in a camper. He was brought in, treated and released.” Without the help of Tuscaloosa community mem-bers from all walks of life, Fisher believes the hospital wouldn’t have been able to han-dle the large number of people needing assistance that night. “I think Tuscaloosa’s medi-cal community did an excellent job,” he said. “The fact that the medical community put all hands on deck is just outstand-ing. I’m really proud of the hos-pital, but the hospital alone, even with all its resources, could not have done it alone.”

By Jason GallowaySports Editor

[email protected]

Traumatic events can have lasting effects, which is why the UA Counseling Center and other psychiatrists have stressed the importance of seeking help for tornado vic-tims. “It’s extremely important,” said Lee Keyes, executive director of the UA Counseling Center. “The thing about [post-traumatic stress dis-order] is that it can be miti-gated. Severe forms can be prevented altogether if people get help quickly.” The UA Counseling Center is located across the street from the law school on Jackson Avenue and is now back to its regular business hours. Keyes said appoint-ments could be scheduled over the phone or, in more urgent cases, by walk-ins. The Counseling Center is offering a tornado support group for students every Wednesday at 7 p.m., starting tonight. He also said for urgent cases after business hours, patients can get connected through the University of Alabama Police Department, and the center is willing to meet patients at their current location. According to Keyes, the UA Counseling Center was set up at four different locations after the storm hit, includ-ing the Student Recreation Center and their center on Jackson Avenue. He esti-mates that the counseling center alone has talked to about 250-300 students since the tornado hit.

“We deal with people who have experienced trauma all the time, but not on this scale,” Keyes said. “[This] involves hundreds, if not thou-sands, of people.” Other counselors and psy-chiatrists around Tuscaloosa and Northport opened their doors Monday for the first time since the tornado. Takesha Shannon from TMS Counseling LLC in Northport is one of those and said tor-nado victims should not delay getting the psychological treatment they need. “Right now, people are more concerned with feed-ing themselves, getting their necessities met,” she said. “It’s difficult for them to real-ize that their emotional needs also have to be a priority. These experiences can have lasting effects that can impact our ability to function.” Shannon said 40 per-cent of her practice is col-lege students and that UA and Stillman College have referred students to her in the past. Keyes said the UA Counseling Center is likely the best source for students with psychological needs because of their experience with college-aged patients. “We only work with stu-dents, so we feel like we know students better than any other mental health providers,” Keyes said. “We understand more about their lives and the resources that are here for them on campus. You can think of us specializing in the age group that is usually here enrolled in school.” The UA Counseling Center can be reached by calling 205-348-3863.

Counselors urge students to talk about storm

Bar-B-Que and other locations were completely demolished. Students walked from their homes and apartments to see the area with their own eyes. Thursday morning, the daylight revealed just how widespread the destruction was. Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox surveyed the damage from a helicopter. “This is going to be a very long process,” he said Thursday. “The amount of damage done is beyond a nightmare.” Maddox estimated Thursday that the damage would total in the tens of millions of dollars, but by Monday, as the destruc-tion across the city became even more apparent, the esti-mate for just debris removal became more than $100 mil-lion. Across the city, though, the cost of the storm is not only measured in dollars. It’s mea-sured in lives. Six students from the University of Alabama, two students from Shelton State Community College and one

AFTERMATHContinued from page 1

student from Stillman College have been confirmed as being killed in the storm. As of Tuesday, the city confirmed that 40 people were killed. Even six days after the torna-do hit, though, that number is not final. Search-and-rescue teams from as far away as Louisiana have continued to comb the debris, and the area of destruction is so vast that it will take a long time before every impacted area is searched, officials said. Teams with cadaver dogs began searching the Holt area Sunday, and many areas of the city and county remain unchecked by search-and-res-cue teams. “A lot of folks don’t realize how long this tornado was,” Tuscaloosa County Probate Judge W. Hardy McCollum said Tuesday. “We have about another 15 to 20 miles beyond Eagle Cove Marina that has yet to be searched.” Although that area is sparsely populated, McCollum said debris from Tuscaloosa could have been carried into the area. Maddox said that once the search-and-rescue phase has

ended, likely on Saturday or Sunday, then debris removal and recovery can begin.

“This is not a sprint, it’s a marathon”

As soon as the storm hit, the people of Tuscaloosa began mobilizing to help those in need. The University of Alabama opened the Student Recreation Center to refu-gees, the city turned the Belk Activity Center into a shelter and many local churches and organizations mobilized to provide food and safety for those who were displaced by the storm. DCH Regional Medical Center treated more than 800 victims Wednesday night. After the storm, volunteers began to line the streets of the affected areas, providing victims with food and water as they searched the debris of their homes. In Alberta, the Federal Emergency Management Agency set up a command cen-ter at Leland Shopping Center

on University Boulevard, where volunteers also coor-dinated their efforts to help residents. In Holt, FEMA set up at Holt Elementary School. The Mid-Alabama region of the American Red Cross used its resources to coordinate more than 1,000 volunteers across the state, serving more than 49,000 meals on Tuesday alone. “This is not a sprint,” said Chris Osborne, director of marketing and public rela-tions for the Mid-Alabama region. “It’s a marathon.” Osborne said the Red Cross is currently working to iden-tify the needs of individual families. Although right now the primary concern of most victims is food and water, dif-ferent needs will arise in the future, and the Red Cross is working to coordinate those for the families that need them. “We work with all of our partners, like FEMA, to make sure we’re helping get peo-ple on the road to recovery,” Osborne said. UA students have played a major role in providing aid to victims. Monday, the UA greek system provided more than

11,000 meals to victims and volunteers. The DKE house served as a major launching point for sending aid through-out the city. Students have provided aid in any way possible, some even going to their homes throughout the country and returning with food and sup-plies. “One of the remarkable sto-ries that has come out of this event has been the generos-ity of our students,” Maddox said. “We see hundreds, if not thousands, of students out volunteering on a daily basis. Students are giving back to Tuscaloosa in an unprec-edented way, and I guess it’s easy to understand why. This is your city and you become attached to it.”

“We refuse to quit”

Maddox and other local offi-cials know the city is hurting, but they also believe it can rise up from the destruction and be rebuilt. “Recovery is going in to places that have already been removed from the map and beginning a new day,”

Maddox said. In Holt, the destruction ofBrown Greenhouses did notmean the end of the business. “Our customers told usnot to quit,” said MargaretBrown, the owner of BrownGreenhouses. Judge McCollum is optimis-tic about the area’s recovery. “We will come back fromthis,” he said Thursday, “andwe will come back even stron-ger.” A year from now, Maddoxsaid he believes Tuscaloosawill still be reeling from thedesolation, but the storm willnot break the spirit of the city. “A year from now, we willbegin to see neighborhoodscome to life,” he said. “WhatI hope to see is that this spiritof unity, this spirit of compas-sion and resiliency, will carryus through and make a newlife here in Tuscaloosa. “We’re still here, we’re stillfighting and we refuse to bedefined by what happened onthat terrible night. We decidefor ourselves that what peoplewill really remember us by isthe fact that we got back onour feet. We refuse to quit,and we’re going to make thiscity a shining city on a hill.”

CW | Kelsey SteinDCH Regional Medical Center remains relatively undamaged, despite the destruction of McFarland Boule-vard and 15th Street.

FAST FACTS• The UA Counseling Center is located

on Jackson Avenue across from the Law School.

• The Counseling Center is hosting a tornado support group Wednesdays at 7 p.m.

The Crimson White SPECIAL EDITION Wednesday, May 4, 2011 3

shelter,” she said. “We also delivered 1,400 meals for lunch and dinner to affected areas. That’s 2,800 meals that we deliv-ered into the community and 1,200 that we served in the shel-ter. And that’s just yesterday.” In addition to providing short-term needs, the Red Cross also provides medi-cal attention and supplies for storm victims. “The shelter is staffed with nurses and doctors that can provide immediate attention to storm victims,” Horsley said. “Some people come in with needs such as oxygen, insulin, and medication. We provide that for them.” Horsley said the Red Cross will not be leaving any time soon. “We are here for the dura-tion,” she said. “As long as people need shelter, we will

be here.” The United Way has also seen an influx of funds and sup-plies for storm victims. “We have estimated that, on the website alone, over $10,000 in donations have come in so far,” said Homer Butler, president of West Alabama United Way. Butler said he has received a large number of phone calls from people who want to know how they can help. “We are asking people to donate to the United Way of West Alabama Tornado Relief Fund,” he said. Donations to help the Tuscaloosa tornado victims can be sent to the United Way or can be made online at uwwa.org. All monetary donations will go directly to helping those who lost everything in the storm. “None of the money that is donated will go to support

the daily operations of United Way,” Butler said. “All of the money that comes in will be used for long-term recovery.” Most of the money that is received by the United Way will be spent to help storm victims get back on their feet. “Once search-and-rescue operations are over, the funds will be used to repair and rebuild homes, remove trees from yards, whatever is need-ed,” Butler said. The United Way is currently in need of many items for storm victims. Items can be dropped off at 2720 6th Street in Tuscaloosa. Right now, the most needed items are nonperishable food, baby food, baby wipes and men’s deodorant. On a smaller scale, many students from the University have decided to use their time,

money and even their homes to help with the relief efforts. Amanda Phillips, a freshman majoring in general health studies, said that seeing the aftermath of the tornado moti-vated her to do something. “I went out on Thursday to help with the cleanup and I saw such a need,” Phillips said. “There wasn’t a lot that I could do because I don’t have any training, and the search-and-rescue teams were still out there.” It was on the trip home that she realized she had to do something to help with the recovery. “When I finally got home I was talking to my parents about how hard it was to leave…” she said. “That’s when we came up with the idea of doing a dona-tion drive here in Texas.” Phillips decided to turn her

family’s garage in her home-town of McKinney, Texas, into a drop-off location for supplies. “A donation drive is some-thing I can do from home,” shesaid. “Once we have collected the supplies, our plan is to headto Tuscaloosa and distribute the items we have gotten to those in need.” Phillips said she hopes her actions will inspire others to dothe same. “I am hoping that by ‘paying it forward,’ meaning that one family takes care of another, others will be inspired to do the same and we can rebuild Tuscaloosa in no time,” she said. The University has created the UA Acts of Kindness Fund to assist employees and stu-dents affected by the tornado. More information can be found at ua.edu/tornadorelief.

DONATIONSContinued from page 1

Horsley said the tornado vic-tims shouldn’t have to worry about having their basic needs met. “These people need to be able to get a hot meal, a cot and a blanket at the end of every day,” she said. “We provide that for them.” Although the Red Cross doesn’t actually cook the meals, it is instrumental in get-ting them to the affected areas. “Many churches and restau-rants have been cooking meals that we deliver to the hardest hit areas,” she said. Thousands of people have been fed two hot meals a day by the Red Cross since the disaster. “Yesterday, we fed 600 peo-ple for lunch and dinner in the

By Will TuckerNews Editor

[email protected]

On Monday, the City of Tuscaloosa provided a miss-ing persons list—the first of its kind from the city since the storm on April 27 tore through the area. “I don’t think we can get this list all the way down to zero,” Mayor Walt Maddox said in a Monday press con-ference. “I’m surprised any-one can survive the wrath of a tornado.” According to UA spokes-woman Cathy Andreen, the University of Alabama will continue to let the police and emergency responders han-dle the business of finding and accounting for missing persons, including possibly missing students. “UAPD is communicat-ing with the Emergency Preparedness Group at the University,” Andreen said. Andreen explained that due to the mutual aid agree-ment between the Tuscaloosa Police Department and UAPD, the two departments are working together in conduct-ing missing persons opera-tions. For example, seekand-find.ua.edu – a city-run web-site designed to gather infor-mation about missing people – is hosted on a University

of Alabama URL but oper-ated by the Tuscaloosa Police Department. “Efforts to find missing individuals are being handled by people who are experts in that field,” Andreen said. She also explained that the University is not planning on accounting for all students by means of an email check-in system. The city, though, isn’t the only organization trying to account for missing persons. Andreen said the University has “encouraged [faculty] to work with their students regarding finalizing grades for the semester,” but some professors and department heads have gone beyond that duty and worked to account for students themselves. Jim Hall, director of New College, said the University did not provide specific guide-lines on how to track down students, but he thought most departments would try. “We tracked down all 200 [New College students] by Friday evening,” Hall said. “I was able to generate a list of all our majors, compile a list of people we haven’t heard from ... People texted me names of people they hadn’t seen or talked to, and we used every bit of social media we could.” Hall said he thought the

University and the city of Tuscaloosa have done a good job handling the tornado aftermath, given the scope of the crisis. He said he realized it would be harder for a group like the biology department to track down 700 students. Becky Florence, director of college relations and associ-ate director of development, explained that the College of Arts and Sciences—com-posed of roughly 9,000 stu-dents—has launched a new email account, named [email protected], to check in with Arts and Sciences stu-dents and gauge their needs in the aftermath of the storm. “[The email system] was set up to give faculty, department chairs and students a central location to get information about resources available on-campus and off-campus,” she said. Florence explained that Arts and Sciences students can ask everything from how to fill out a Federal Emergency Management Agency form to how to find housing. “We requested the email on Friday, and we had the email set up over the weekend … and it is online now,” Florence said. “We told the [depart-ment] chairs on Monday morning, and we’re very soon going to send an email out.” In 2005, Tulane University checked in via email with all

of their students following Hurricane Katrina, accord-ing to Mike Strecker, director of public relations at Tulane. According to a report from 2004, Tulane’s enrollment at that time was just over 13,000 students. “We did have our students check in by email after the storm,” Strecker said. “Going into it, we were pretty con-fident everyone had gone into it safely – there was an evacuation from the city and the University.” Strecker said this evacuation is a key differ-ence between a hurricane and tornado – with a tornado, he said, “you don’t have a warn-ing. You just have to get out of its way.” Strecker said after the University accounted for its students, Tulane set up other communication tools to keep students in direct contact with the administration. “We have an emergency website that we activated … that was a permanent thing,” Strecker said. “If we had been on campus, the president would have been meeting with the students ... In the imme-diate aftermath, we did it via live chats where they would ask questions virtually.” Six years later, technol-ogy remains a useful tool for some UA professors and stu-dents hoping to account for

WAYS TO FIND PEOPLE & REGISTER YOURSELF AS SAFE

Department chairs check in with students

their fellow students. In the College of Arts and Sciences, for instance, Dean Robert Olin encouraged department heads to check in with stu-dents and gauge their needs, but left the decision of how to do so up to the individual department leaders, Florence said. “The University has a redundant communication mechanism with students,” Florence said, explaining that administrators rely on a vari-ety of methods to contact stu-dents, like texts, emails and social media. Shane Givens, an instruc-tor within the Management Information Systems depart-ment, explained that his stu-dents used a Facebook group

called MIS Post Tornado to find and account for each other after Wednesday’s tor-nado. “That’s when [our efforts] really got organized, with the Facebook group,” Givens said. “We knew where half of everybody was by Friday and on Sunday we were able to confirm everybody. “We did lose one student, Marcus Smith, a sophomore—they found him Sunday. Otherwise, we were able to confirm that everybody else was alive,” he said. Givens said that other than emails from the business school to its students, he was unaware of other concerted efforts to account for students by the University.

• seekandfi nd.ua.edu• TuscaloosaNews.com – Help us

Find Loved Ones• Red Cross: safeandwell.communi-

ties.org

Above: President Barack Obama visits tornado damage in the Alberta neighborhood in Tuscaloosa, Friday, April 29.Left: President Barack Obama, First Lady Mi-chelle Obama, and Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, greet residents in the Alberta neigh-borhood in Tus-caloosa, Friday, April 29, as they toured tornado damage.

AP

By Jonathan ReedManaging Editor

[email protected]

Jimmie Greenwell’s apart-ment in Northport is miles away from the tornado’s path. On Thursday and Friday, he took in friends whose homes were destroyed or without power. The house where Greenwell planned to live in the fall, however, is little more than a downed tree and a pile of rubble. Like many students – both those whose current homes were destroyed or those who planned to move into housing that was destroyed – Greenwell, a junior majoring in aerospace engineering, is now beginning the frantic search for housing for next year. Jim Andrews, the publisher of the Tuscaloosa Apartment Guide, created a Facebook page Monday to help dis-placed students and residents find housing properties with openings. The page, called Housing for Tornado Victims, allows owners of rental property to post what openings they have, and also encourages those searching for housing to post what they’re looking for. “Instead of having to hit every single property, they can just go and check the post-ings to see if there’s an avail-ability,” Andrews said. “You don’t have to drive, say, to University Village to see. You can just check the Facebook

Facebook group helps students fi nd housing

page and see what’s open.” Andrews launched the page around 9 a.m. Monday. He said there needed to be a more cen-tralized location for people to find housing. “Yesterday, I was talking to Warner Johnson at Duckworth Morris, and he said their phones were melting down from all the calls,” he said. “First, I thought about creating a blog, and then we ended up creating a Facebook page.” The page lists apartments available for rent immediately and those that will become available for students in August. The page is also linked on the main page at housing.ua.edu. The University has already opened up the Rose Towers residence hall for displaced students, faculty and staff, said Alicia Browne, associate direc-tor for information and com-munication for Housing and Residential Communities. “We have housing available in Rose Towers,” she said. “Those who are moving in now are students who lived off campus.”

Browne said Housing and Residential Communities is working with each displaced person individually to find the most appropriate housing arrangement for them. Students who need housing for the summer can apply to live in Rose Towers through the normal process on myBama, but will be charged the normal fee for summer housing, she said. Those who need housing can call the Rose Towers desk at 205-348-7559, she said. Greenwell said his housing situation is still uncertain, but he is trying to find a familiar place to stay first. The company he planned to rent from will have insurance adjustors assess the damage Tuesday, and then he will worry about housing for the fall. “I’m waiting to hear back from the place I was supposed to stay at,” he said, “and I’m trying to see if the place I’m staying at now has any open-ings. If they do, then I’ll try to stay here.”

FAST FACTS

Obama surveys Tuscaloosa damage

• To move into Rose Towers temporarily, call 205-348-7559.

• For help fi nding an available apart-ment visit the Housing for Tornado Victims Facebook page.

4 Wednesday, May 4, 2011 SPECIAL EDTION The Crimson White

Storm claims lives of nine college students

By Kelsey SteinLifestyles Editor

Brandon Scott Atterton, 23, died April 27 when a tornado hit his home in the Cedar Crest neighborhood off 15th Street. Atterton, of Bryant, Ala., was a UA student majoring in his-tory and was employed by DCH Regional Medical Center. Perry Blake Peek of Pisgah, Ala., and Morgan Marlene Sigler, of Bryant, Ala., were also in the Cedar Crest home during the storm. They both died at DCH Regional Medical Center. Sigler and Atterton, who grew up together in Bryant, had been friends since elemen-tary school, said Cody Kirk, a childhood friend also from Bryant. Jessie Strickland, a friend of Atterton’s, described him as “an all-around nice guy” who loved his family. After college, he planned to become a history teacher and high school bas-ketball coach. “He had a niece that he adored, and every chance he had to go see her, he did,” she said. “Family was really big to him.” A funeral service was held

BRANDON SCOTT ATTERTONUniversity of Alabama

Monday, May 2, at the Moore Funeral Home Chapel. Atterton is survived by his father, Charles Atterton; mother, Nancy Atterton; brothers Brian Atterton and Chance Atterton; grand-parents Paul and Gladys Atterton and Bud Hicks; cousins Amanda Hogan, Jessica Holloway, Dilyn Atterton, Lindsey Nipper; uncle Kenneth Atterton; aunts Robin Nipper and Donna Hogan and niece Alexus Atterton.

By Stephen Charles WalkerStaff Reporter

Friends and acquaintances mourn the death of Ashley Harrison, a senior who was just a week away from receiv-ing her degree in economics from the University. Fox 4 reported that Harrison was found 100 yards from the house she and boy-friend Carson Tinker were in when the EF-4 tornado hit Wednesday night. Harrison’s friends remem-ber her as someone with a great personality and an exceptionally bright future. “Beyond her high intellect and her ability to excel in whatever she chose to pur-sue, she had the most amaz-ing personality,” Colin Peek, a close friend of Harrison’s, told the Dallas Morning News. “She just had an elegance about her.” Among Harrison’s greatest attributes was her ability to remain the same, no matter who she was around. “You felt at ease being your-self around her because you knew she was being herself a hundred percent,” Peek, a for-mer Alabama football player,

ASHLEY THERESE PERRET HARRISONUniversity of Alabama

told the Dallas Morning News. As the storm approached Tuscaloosa on Wednesday, Harrison was at home with her boyfriend and two other friends. Harrison’s uncle, Marion Perret, told WFAA TV that those inside the house took shelter in a clos-et as the tornado neared, but the tornado hit the house directly. Tinker and Harrison’s two friends sur-vived the storm.

By Hannah MaskAssistant News Editor

University of Alabama stu-dent Danielle Downs, 24, died April 27 when a tornado hit her house on Beverly Heights. Stillman College student Will Stevens and Shelton State Community College student Loryn Brown died at the same address. “All three of the students were good friends,” Downs’ mother Terri said. “Both Danielle and Will Stevens graduated from Priceville High School. Will had left his apart-ment to protect the girls. He was an honorable young man.” “Danielle Downs was my best friend, and closer to me than my own sister,” Debbie Graff, Downs’ friend of six years, said. “Danielle was an advocate for the underdog,” Graff said. “During our time together, I witnessed Danielle stand up to men twice her size for the sake of justice.” Downs was majoring in social work and was set to graduate May 7. “She would have been an amazing social worker,” Graff said “Her heart extended to everyone, even her enemies.

DANIELLE MARIE DOWNSUniversity of Alabama

She could forgive you before you could apologize. Danielle loved with gusto, and never left a part of herself out of anything she was involved in.” A funeral service was held Monday, May 2, at Annunciation of the Lord Catholic Church in Decatur, Ala. “She was my best friend and still is,” Downs’ sister, Michelle, said. “I love her so much.” Downs is survived by her parents, Ed and Terri Downs; sister, Michelle Downs; and grandmother, Inez Bordelon.

By Stephen Charles WalkerStaff Reporter

Friends, family and the Gamma Phi Beta soror-ity mourn the loss of Melanie Nicole Mixon, 21, a 2010 initi-ate of the Epsilon Lambda Chapter and a junior at the University of Alabama. Mixon was a victim of the deadly storms that swept across Alabama on Wednesday. “Our thoughts and prayers are with Nicole’s family and chapter sisters during this most difficult time,” said Gamma Phi Beta International President Linda Malony. “May all those who were touched by Nicole’s love and friendship remember her fondly.” Mixon, a graduate of Minor High School and Jefferson State Community College, was an honor student major-ing in accounting. She is survived by her mother, Bonnie Maharrey; father, William Mixon; sis-ters, Brittney Maharrey, Courtney Maharrey and Leah Varner; maternal grandpar-ents: Cotton and Melanie Varner paternal grandmother,

MELANIE NICOLE MIXONUniversity of Alabama

Matilda Snow and numer-ous aunts, uncles and cous-ins. Her visitation was held Sunday. May 1, and her funeral service was held Monday, May 2, at Crestview Memorial Funeral Home in Adamsville, Ala. She was buried in Mulga, Ala.


After days of searching, Marcus Jeremy Smith, 21, was discovered dead near his apart-ment in the Charleston Square complex late Sunday afternoon. Smith, of Richmond, Va., was a UA junior majoring in man-agement information systems. “Marcus was a child of God, in how he lived and who he was,” his uncle, Derrick Pearson, said. “As family, you have hopes and dreams of who your young men grow up to be. By the outpouring of love and support, I would say that we can be proud in that Marcus exceeded our wishes.” Smith was an active member of the Northwood Church of Christ, and the people he knew there remember him fondly. “My life has been touched just in the short months of my know-ing him,” fellow church member Amanda Wildman said. “He will always be in my heart and I will never forget him. I have comfort in knowing that he is in heaven and I look forward to seeing him again someday.” Pearson said Smith had turned out exactly how he’d

MARCUS JEREMY SMITHUniversity of Alabama

hoped. “His parents, his family, his friends and his communi-ty loved him,” Pearson said. “I haven’t heard anyone say that they wouldn’t be proud of Marcus as their own. That’s impressive.” A memorial service was held Tuesday at Northwood Church of Christ. A funeral service and burial will take place May 7 in Richmond, Va. Smith is survived by his parents, Robert and Jackie Smith, as well as an older brother.


Friends and family mourn the loss of Morgan Marlene Sigler, who died at DCH Regional Medical Center from injuries sustained during Wednesday afternoon’s tornado. Sigler, of Bryant, Ala., was a UA student majoring in graphic design. Sigler, Perry Blake Peek of Pisgah, Ala., and Brandon Scott Atterton, also a UA student, were killed when the storm destroyed a home in the Cedar Crest neigh-borhood off 15th Street. “After the tornado went by, I tried calling Morgan like ten times and Scott four or five times and couldn’t get a hold of them,” said Cody Kirk, a child-hood friend and fellow UA stu-dent. Kirk, Sigler and Atterton had known each other since elemen-tary school, according to Kirk. They all lived within two miles of each other in Bryant. “Me and Morgan were insepa-rable,” Kirk said. “If you saw her, you saw me.” Sigler’s uncle, Chuck Sigler, described her as a wonderful niece.

MORGAN MARLENE SIGLERUniversity of Alabama

“She would brighten the world around her and was kind, caring and loving,” he said. “She was also very artistic and loved art. She was the best of us and will be greatly missed.” A funeral service was held Sunday, May 1, at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Bryant. Sigler is survived by her parents, Allan and Vega Sigler; brothers Eric Smith and Justin Sigler; grandpar-ents Howard and Jean Sigler; niece and nephew, Blake and Sadie Smith and numerous aunts, uncles and cousins.


Loryn Alexandria Brown, 21, was killed April 27 when her apartment was leveled by the powerful tornado that devastat-ed much of Tuscaloosa. Madeline Faulk, a close friend who grew up with Brown, said she and Brown’s families are very close. “My mom is friends with Loryn’s mom,” Faulk said. “Loryn’s mom was on the phone with her [daughter] and the tornado hadn’t hit her neigh-borhood yet. She lost her [cell phone] signal and then her mom couldn’t get a hold of her again.” Brown was discovered dead the following morning. “We found out [Thursday] at 1 a.m. that they had found her body,” Faulk said. “Her dad had to identify the body.” Brown attended Shelton State Community College and was planning to enroll at The University of Alabama in the fall. One of the main things friends and family, and even those who never met Brown, tried to

remember is that everything happens for a reason. “God allows things like this to happen for reasons we may never know,” Kim Evans of Prattville, Ala., wrote on an online guest book dedicated to Brown. “Grow in faith through this tragedy, and in time you will find peace,” she wrote to Brown’s mother. A funeral service was held Monday, May 2, at New Home Baptist Church in Elmore. Brown is survived by her mother, Ashley Mims of Wetumpka, Ala., and her father, Shannon Brown of Madison, Ala.


Shelton State Community College student Willie Lee “Trey” Turner, III, 21, died in the April 27 tornado. After graduating from Holt High School, Turner decided to pursue a career in welding, The Tuscaloosa News report-ed. Some of his favorite pas-times were outdoor activities like hunting and fishing. His family and friends said he was always smiling and kindhearted. “Trey was a really great guy,” his cousin Ashley Turner said. “He always was outgoing and goofy. Every time you saw him anywhere, he would have a cheesy smile on his face.”Services were held Monday at 2 p.m. at Sunset Funeral Home Chapel, and he was bur-ied in Pate Cemetery. He was preceded in death by his mother, Patricia M. Turner, his paternal grand-parents, Willie and Mable Turner and his maternal

grandparents, Buddy and Myrtle Hodo. He is survived by his father, Willie Lee Turner, Jr., and his sister, Erika Wilson.


William Chance Stevens, a Stillman College student, was killed by the deadly tornado that came through Tuscaloosa the afternoon of Wednesday, April 27. Stevens, of Somerville, Ala., was a 2007 graduate of Priceville High School and for-mer baseball player at Stillman. He was scheduled to graduate at the commencement ceremo-ny May 7. “He was a great young man,” said Donny Crawford, Stevens’ baseball coach. “A very quiet kid that would do anything for you at any time, worked his butt off trying to get better every day, just that kind of per-son that all the players liked.” “We’ve got some things planned to remember Will as being part of our program,” Crawford said. “He won’t be forgotten. That’s for sure. “It’s just hard to believe,” he said. “It’s just you get close to these guys and they’re like your own because you watch

them grow up and you know they’re close to getting their degree and going on with their lives. Then suddenly they don’t have one.” Stevens’ visitation was held Tuesday, May 3, at Somerville Church of God in Somerville, Ala. His funeral service will be held today at 11 a.m. at the same location. He was survived by his parents, Darrell and Carolyn Stevens; sister, Taylor Stevens; grandfather, Wayne Stevens; and grandparents, Bill and Ann Faulkner.

WILLIAM CHANCE STEVENSStillman College

LORYN ALEXANDRIA BROWNShelton State Community College

WILLIE LEE TURNERShelton State Community College


By Kelsey Stein and Jonathan ReedThe Crimson White

Wednesday night, Margaret Brown saw her house fall around her and her busi-ness destroyed. Sunday, she vowed to pick up the piec-es. Brown, who owns Brown Greenhouses on Crescent Ridge Road in Holt, was at her home on Cherrywood Circle when the tornado hit. She and her daughter, Ann Marie, sought shelter in the bathroom, but it was a friend of her daughter who ultimately saved their lives, she said. Michael Bujalski went to work at Kozy’s restaurant at 3 p.m. Wednesday, but Kozy’s sent him home when they had no power. Instead of going to his home, which was not in the tornado’s path, Bujalski went to check on the Browns. “I don’t think I would be here without Michael,” Margaret Brown said. “I think God put Michael there.” Bujalski held Margaret and Ann Marie Brown to the floor of the bathroom as the tornado picked up the house three times and stripped away the walls. “If he hadn’t been there,” Ann Marie Brown said, “we would’ve gone up in the air.” When it was over, all three escaped uninjured. “God and Michael were with us,” Margaret Brown said. “God held us all together.” Sunday afternoon, volunteers swarmed Brown Greenhouses to help the family think about starting over. People from as far away as Florida helped salvage what plants remained in the Browns’ 16 green-houses, while others used the parking lot of the business to prepare food for resi-dents and volunteers. The family’s business has served Holt for about 24 years. “Our customers don’t want us to quit, so I guess we’re not quitting,” Margaret Brown said. While the Browns are thinking of rebuilding, others in Holt are still survey-ing the damage. The Federal Emergency Management Agency set up a command center at Holt Elementary School, and police with cadaver dogs began scouring what remains of neighborhoods. People lined Crescent Ridge Road handing out food and water to volunteers, residents and anyone who passed by. But all of the food and water coming into the area does not meet the needs of all resi-dents, one volunteer said. “Yesterday, when we were in Alberta, it was mostly workers needing food,” said Kelly Greene, a volunteer from Tuscaloosa. “Here, it’s families needing everything.” Greene said residents often need small items most volunteers don’t bring. One resident needed diapers and formula for a newborn. Another, a diabetic, needed something sweet, and a volunteer sup-plied lollipops. The Holt area is still in need of every-thing, Greene said. “It’s completely different here than what we found yesterday in Alberta,” she said. “This place seems to be a little bit forgotten.” Power companies from Georgia and South Carolina put new electrical poles up along Crescent Ridge Road, but rebuilding Holt will take far more than that, Greene said. “They’ve got the poles up, but there’s nothing to hook [them] to,” she said. “Holt Elementary and the water tower are still standing, but there’s nothing else.” Rafeal Nevels returned to his home Sunday to salvage his car. The wall around the back of his house was missing, but a bookshelf and other pieces of furni-ture still stood in the house, fully visible from the road. Nevels said he had spent much of his time out helping others, and that his own possessions had fallen victim because of it. Looters had taken his flat screen televi-sion and his computer monitor. “I know it’s gone, but it’ll get replaced,” he said. “I’m not pitching a fit about it; I just thank God my life is here.” Residents said looters were using back roads to get around police after curfew, since even residents were not allowed in the area after 8 p.m. Nevels’ mother-in-law, Shirley Billingsley, said despite all of the prob-lems and the looting, she has seen the best of the city rise up in wake of the crisis. “It’s rough out here,” she said, “but you know what? First time in my life I ever saw Tuscaloosa – black, white, Puerto Rican, Mexican – working together. Hallelujah, God is good.”

Devastated area ‘a little bit forgotten’

Community spotlight //Holt

Top: Residents clear debris in front of their home on Crescent Ridge Road.Left: Entire neighborhoods in Holt, including homes on Keene Drive, have been reduced to rubble.Top right: One Holt resident expresses frustra-tion with the tornadoʼs destruction.Above right: Volunteers work to clear debris and begin rebuilding at Brown Greenhouses.Below: The storm intensifi ed as it moved across Tuscaloosa, destroying much of the Holt commu-nity.

CW | Kelsey Stein

HOW TO HELP // HOLT

• Donate or sign up to volunteer: Holt High School, 3801 Alabama Ave. NE, Tusca-loosa, AL 35404, 205-348-2768

• Donate: Boy Scouts of America, 2700 River Road NE, Tuscaloosa, AL, 205-554-1680


Community spotlight //Rosedale


[email protected]

Losing a little may not seem that bad. Unless that’s all you had to start with. As Wednesday’s tornado neared Rosedale Court, a poverty-stricken Tuscaloosa Housing Authority community located on 10th Avenue, Rose Roberts, 53, prayed to God to keep her family safe. “God told me to get out of the bed and go look out of the door,” she said. “I saw it, and I said, ‘Lord, it’s coming, Lord, it’s coming.’” Keith Roberts, Rose’s 29-year-old son, got his moth-er and 26-year-old sister on the floor as the tornado came closer. “He got our heads covered,” Rose Roberts said. “We laid there praying. If God tells you to do something, you better listen.” On day four after the torna-do, Keith Roberts still bears an open wound on his right wrist, but he doesn’t know how he got it. He just knows his legs were trapped under the hallway wall after it collapsed. The family was buried in the rubble for about 20 minutes until one of their neighbors dug them out. “Seeing his face was just a great relief,” Rose Roberts said. But outside of the rubble, there were screams for help, and Rose Roberts said her mind went blank. “It was so sad to see those babies,” she said of people who lost their lives on her street. “I saw an arm sticking out, but there was no body attached to it.” Leaving the ruins, they head-ed toward the plasma center on 10th Avenue. A van picked them up and transported them to Belk Activity Center, where they were temporarily housed along with many others from their community. There were so many people seeking shelter, Keith Roberts said, Belk ran out of beds. Twice. They returned the next day to try to salvage some of their clothing and other possessions, but looters had already all but cleared the area of anything they might have saved. “What little we did have left, they took,” Keith Roberts said. Though Rose Roberts retains her positive attitude, she can’t help but question what would make someone steal from those who have so little to begin with. “I can’t understand, in the name of God, why people would steal like that,” she said. “They’ll get theirs, that’s for sure. You just don’t steal from

Pieces of Rosedale scattered across Alabama

people like that.” But her optimistic outlook is still sometimes compromised by what she experienced dur-ing and after the storm. “Sometimes I cry,” she said. “But I cry in the bathroom or somewhere away from my chil-dren. I can’t let my children see me crying.” As the Robertses settled into their temporary shelter in Belk, 54-year-old Marion Conner slept in her house — one of the few left standing — in hopes of preventing looters from steal-ing more of her possessions just hours after the tornado. “Our property was outside, and people were already taking it,” she said. “The fire depart-ment said it would be safe for us to stay there, so we did.” However, other families in the community have lost much more. “People were yelling for a boy named Justin,” Conner said. “We found him a day or so after in the morgue. He was blown out of his house. He was 14.” Justin Leeric Thomas of the 2900 block of 10th Avenue East was found dead at 440 30th Place, almost four miles away. Conner said her son was

home when the tornado hit. She was working her job at Penny Profit Cleaners on 15th Street. “He heard the tornado siren and told the other people at the house to take cover,” she said. “The dog and the back of the house blew away, so he ran back in and flipped the couch over and hid behind it, and the windows started busting.” When the tornado passed, there were people screaming all over, Conner’s son said. “He started pulling women and children out of the rubble,” Conner said. Now, they’re working to put their life back together. “We’re working until we’re exhausted everyday,” she said. “Then we find somewhere to get a hot shower and lay our heads down, and then we start it all over again.” A couple of days after the tornado, Conner’s 28-year-old daughter — who lives in California—found a Facebook group dedicated to returning photos and documents discov-ered after the tornado to their original owners. “She called and said, ‘I was just online and I found this web-site, and the third photo they have is of you,” Conner said.

Top: The police cordoned off the areas hit the hardest by the tor-nado. The public housing projects in Rosedale were only accessible to residents after many of the buildings were completely torn from their foundations.Center: Few walls were left standing in the Rosedale community, and winds were violent enough to move all of the cars on the street behind where this photo was taken. Violent winds fl ipped the car seen in the picture and dropped it onto the remains of a house.Above: Many houses in the Rosedale Community were completely destroyed by the tornado.Left: Residents of Rosedale Community gather to distribute food and water near the Tuscaloosa Public Housing Authority building on April 29.

CW | Drew Hoover

HOW TO HELP // ROSEDALE

“The photo she saw was found about 80 miles away. “They’ve found three more photos since then, and they were up to 100 miles away. They were all over the state. My daughter is getting them mailed back to me.” For now, Conner’s family is displaced and living in separate locations, but like Rose, she appreciates what she has left. “We’ve got life, we’re OK,” she said. “We’re blessed to be alive. The rest doesn’t matter.” Waiting for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Rose sat with her son in salvaged chairs near the road on Sunday; they said they were nothing but happy to be alive. “We’ll be all right,” Rose said, smiling. “Many people can’t see that.”

• Donate: Bring ready to eat and nonperishable food items, toiletries, clothing, tarps for covering roofs, coolers, ice, fl ash lights, batteries and blankets to community members.


Community spotlight //Alberta

By Kelsey Stein and Jonathan Reed

The Crimson White

Kirkland Enterprises on University Boulevard in Alberta opened in 1935 as a filling station and a garage. Eventually, it grew to include several auto repair businesses run by different family members. Wednesday night, it was reduced to rubble. “It’s all in the Lord’s hands now,” said Faye Kirkland Grow, whose family still owns the business. “You just have to pick up and move on.” Alberta, a Tuscaloosa neighborhood a few miles east of the UA campus, was one of Tuscaloosa’s areas most devastated by Wednesday night’s deadly tornado, with block after block of homes and

businesses in the tornado’s path now unrecognizable. Tuscaloosa City Councilman Kip Tyner took his mother to her house only five minutes before the tornado hit their neighborhood. “I’ve been through torna-does before, but never in my life have I experienced the noise of this one,” he said. “It sounded like 25 trains.” When he emerged from the house, he saw a scene of pan-demonium and ruin he’d never expected to see in his life. Some people were running panicked through the streets, crying and screaming. Others were pulling the dead from the debris that was once their homes. “They were using the old Texaco station as a morgue,” Tyner said. “There were bod-ies all over the parking lot

covered in sheets. The young-est I saw was 3 years old and the oldest were about 80.” Tyner, who grew up in Alberta, knows of nine friends who were killed in the storm. He described the aftermath of the tornado as “the worst hor-ror movie [he] could imagine.” On Saturday afternoon, Kim Sanders, owner of Tuscaloosa Physical Therapy on University Boulevard, con-tinued sifting through the remains of her business with the help of her family, includ-ing her daughters Kaitlin and Rachel. “The storm lifted the whole building, picked it up and crashed it back down,” Kim Sanders said. They have managed to sal-vage many of the possessions inside, besides some of their therapy equipment.

“We found a framed license and books underneath the walls,” Kaitlin Sanders said. “It looked like the building was eating them.” Kim Sanders is primarily concerned with finding a way to get her business up and running as soon as possible for the sake of her patients. “We’ve still been doing ther-apy even though the place is gone,” Kaitlin Sanders said. “We did it right here on the sidewalk.” Volunteers have flocked to the community in response, setting up their base of opera-tions in the Leland Shopping Center parking lot. A group called Samaritan’s Purse, various church groups and college students, are distribut-ing food, water, clothing and other necessities to members of the Alberta community.

Volunteers from as far away as Indiana are flocking to the disaster zone. Truckloads of nonperish-able items have arrived from across the country, and cases of water are stacked taller than the people dispensing them. “We’ve got enough water for America here,” Tyner said. Christin Byars, a UA gradu-ate student, arrived in Alberta around 10 a.m. Saturday to volunteer. “We’ve gotten clothes dona-tions because other places can’t take them anymore,” she said. “I’ve been thankful that everyone has stepped in, but there’s so much to be done.” Hayley Sansing, a High Forest resident, organized a group of friends to set up a tent on the outskirts of Alberta. Starting Friday morning with

five cases of water, they havespent the last two days grill-ing hot dogs and hamburgersto give out to anyone in need. “We’ve bought a lot of water,but also trucks have come bywith it,” she said. “We’ve givenout LSU water, Ole Miss waterand Alpha Chi water. The sup-port has been phenomenal.” Despite the current abun-dance of supplies, Alberta willneed volunteers and donationsto aid the community’s recov-ery process over the comingweeks and months. Powerwill not be restored for atleast four weeks. The FederalEmergency ManagementAgency is taking applicationsfrom displaced Alberta resi-dents, but the process is slow. Tyner said he hopes searchand recovery will be finishedby next week, at which pointcleanup will begin.

Alberta residents ‘pick up and move on’

HOW TO HELP // ALBERTA• Donate: Leland Shopping Center, corner of 26th Ave. E and 10th Street E, Tuscaloosa, Ala., 35404.

They are accepting donations of ready-to-eat and nonperish-able food items, tarps for covering roofs, clothing, newborn and baby items, clothes hangers, school supplies, sunscreen, wipes, soap, towels, washcloths, hand sanitizer, fl ashlights, deodorant and laundry detergent.

Above: An Alberta resident salvages his belongings from his home.Above left: The Texaco station at the intersection of University Boulevard and 25th Avenue East was destroyed by the tornado.Middle left: Houses and apartments on 7th Street East were directly in the path of the deadly storm.Left: Some Alberta residents have left religious messages and Bible verses on their de-molished homes.

CW | Kelsey Stein


Community spotlight //Wood ManorNeighbors dodge tornado, return to ruins

By Jason GallowaySports Editor

Neighbors Sam Rombokas and Modell Hawkins used to wave at each other across the street and talk about why Rombokas’ grass always looked better than Hawkins’. “As soon as the weather looks good, you’ve got to scalp it,” he’d tell her. Now, after perhaps the worst weather their town has ever seen, their conversations will center around which posses-sions ended up in each other’s rubble-laden homes and where they can find volunteer-made burgers. Rombokas and Hawkins resided in Wood Manor, one of many communi-ties off Hargrove Road that Wednesday’s EF-4 tornado did not spare. “It’s just stuff. I keep telling myself it’s just stuff,” Hawkins said. “You’re alive. That’s what counts.” Hawkins was lucky to have been visiting a doctor in New Orleans, where she lived for 27 years, when the storm hit. In 2005, she evacuated from Hurricane Katrina and returned to the Gulf to find her house just three blocks from where the flooding had stopped. In Tuscaloosa, she wasn’t so lucky. Rombokas, who graduated from the University nearly 40 years ago, was actu-ally the one who called her Wednesday night to give her the heart-breaking news. “I was seriously sick at my stomach,” Hawkins said. “Just

a big knot because I had no idea if there was anything left.” Her house is now simply a pile of wood and bricks. She found her mattress hundreds of feet away from her property, and the tornado carried some of her possessions much far-ther. “I actually had a guy call me and said he found a Ziploc bag with some [of my] prescrip-tions and some receipts in his yard in Birmingham,” she said. Rombokas’ house, even more by chance, was also vacated when the storm hit. His daughter and baby grand-daughter were scheduled to fly into Huntsville that night but got redirected to Birmingham because of the storms. Rombokas’ wife was in Huntsville to pick them up, and his daughter needed more formula to feed her baby, so Rombokas had to make the trip to Birmingham. They would have all arrived back at the house before the tornado swallowed it up, but his daugh-ter wanted to wait for the car seat in her mother’s car. After the storm passed through, Rombokas’ brother-in-law, Bill Massengale, called him to tell him what had hap-pened to his house. “It was hard for him to say,” Rombokas said. “At first it was, ‘Your house took a hit. It’s pretty bad.’ Then it turned into, ‘It’s totally devastated. It’s destroyed. There’s nothing left.’ “It was even worse than what I thought [when we got back].”

Community spotlight //Cedar Crest

‘This too shall pass’: Survivors refl ectBy William Evans and

Hannah MaskThe Crimson White

“My house is broken,” three-year-old Wyatt Miller told his grandmother Wednesday night after the tornado passed through. “I just cried when he told me,” Wilma Miller, 76, said. Three days after the tornado, Wyatt is excited to accompany his father when he hauls sal-vaged items from the house in his truck, and Wyatt’s mother said it’s time to move forward. “Reality has set in,” Rachelle Miller, 44, said. “Right after it happened, we were just in shock.” The main items have been moved out, she said, and luck-ily they were even able to save their photos. “We lost a lot,” Rachelle Miller said. “But we were lucky to walk out without a scratch.” They have temporary hous-ing, she said, and after today, they will not be returning to the home they’ve lost. “Today, we have to finish,” she said. Search and rescue priorities have shifted from rescuing vic-tims trapped under the rubble to recovery of those who have died as a result of the tornado, said firefighters on the scene at Cedar Crest. Clearing the road of debris and identifying hazards such as power outages and gas leaks are among the primary concerns for emergency crews tasked with spearheading the

relief effort and restoration of the city. The tornado has turned rows of houses into a mangled briar patch of twisted trees, splin-tered wood, shattered glass and upturned vehicles, some of which are lying on top of hous-es themselves. The affected areas have improved to this condition after three days of work by emergen-cy crews who have spray-paint-ed the damaged houses with numbers to indicate the num-ber of deaths per household. Although many houses in Cedar Crest bore a zero to indi-cate no deaths, residents have spray-painted mementos of their own to show their hope or desperation. A Bible quote from the Book of Judges graced the front of a house in Cedar Crest that read, “The Earth shook and the skies poured down.” Next to that quote, the wall proclaimed, “This too shall pass.” Emergency and volunteer groups are focusing on assist-ing the survivors of the storm as cadaver dogs sniff through the rubble 30 minutes at a time to search for bodies. Meanwhile, on the street parallel to the Millers’, Blair Poe, a senior majoring in man-agement and information sys-tems, received MREs — meals ready to eat — from a postman. Though Poe said he has friends and family who are feeding him, he delighted in taking the MREs to boost his food supply. Poe said after receiving

warnings from weather chan-nels about the tornado as early as Tuesday night, he took it seriously and prepared for the worst, making sure to take care of his dog, Dylan. “It built in intensity; I was just waiting to get sucked out,” he said, speaking of when the tornado hit his house. “I was in the bathtub face down holding onto my dog. He tried to jump out, but I held onto him ... He survived with me.” Poe counts himself lucky; he still has a front door and most of his roof. “It’s an indescribable feel-ing,” he said. “My house was shaking so hard I didn’t hear a tree fall through my bedroom. “It’s just a building, building roar. And all you hear are trees snapping, glass shattering. There was insulation blowing up under the bathroom door – I had it chained shut. I’m just extremely fortunate. I had a tree fall five feet away from me ... My house is still standing. It blows my mind.” After the tornado passed, Poe said he emerged from his shelter to find his neighbor-hood, where he’s lived for eight years, destroyed. “The most surreal feeling was stepping out of the front door,” he said. However, he only had to save a puppy crawling out of a shat-tered window. “It’s just strange that the people who needed help got themselves out on their own,” Poe said. Back on the Millers’ street,

though, Morgan Sigler, Scott Atterton and Blake Peek weren’t so fortunate. “When we went over there, I saw a group of people gather-ing, so I knew it was probably something bad that I didn’t need to see,” he said. “One of the cancer doctors (David Hinton) had come out of [his son Dennis’] house and was telling people [a man] was under a tree, and I knew I couldn’t do anything for some-one like that. “But that’s when a lot of feel-ings, emotions hit – the experts are walking around, people who can do something are here ... I just had to turn around at that point and just get my stuff

and get out, because I just couldn’t deal with seeing any-thing too gruesome after being through all the trauma of that.” Since the tornado, Poe said he’s having a hard time sleep-ing. “I finally fell asleep on my own, and I had a nightmare,” he said. “It’s like an overwhelm-ing anxiety of being about to be sucked out, because it’s just like the movies. “My whole world was shak-en; it wasn’t just the ground and the house. It was just everything. You just wait for it to peak; you just come to terms with everything in life ... It’s only something you can really replicate in your dreams.”

After the storm hit, there was a time for shock, a time to be still and wonder why this happened. But on Sunday, four days after the disaster, Rombokas’ and Hawkins’ prop-erties were filled with people they didn’t know who were helping dig up whatever could be salvaged. Next door to Hawkins, at what’s left of the Central Church of Christ, a line of Disaster Assistance Church of Christ volunteers worked quickly to organize and deliver

meals to victims and give away supplies and clothes to those who lost everything. “It’s incredible,” Hawkins said. “I was living in New Orleans and evacuated from Katrina. I went back down there, and there was a lot of support down there, but I have to say, in some degrees, I don’t think near as much as what I’ve seen here.” The volunteers next door scrambled to help out under blazing heat. Many of them were not personally affected

by the storm. For them, that doesn’t matter. “No, that’s not necessary,” one of the volunteers said to a reporter after being asked for her name. “We’re just here to volunteer and help out.” The Rombokas family took a small break from clean-ing Sunday afternoon. Sam Rombokas set up a camera fac-ing where the frame of their front door still stands. His wife, two children and grand-child shifted together in front of what was left of their house

while he set the timer on thecamera. A wide smile stretched ontothe face of Sam’s daughter asshe pet her baby’s head. Hiswife and son followed suit asthey watched the baby smileback, and before the camerawas even ready, the entirefamily was beaming in frontof their destroyed home. Theyhad lost everything but stillhad each other. “We’re over the pity partyand moving on,” Rombokassaid.

CW | Kelsey SteinHomes throughout the Cedar Crest neighborhood off 15th Street were destroyed by the tornado.

HOW TO HELP // CEDAR CREST

HOW TO HELP // WOOD

MANOR

At Sam Rom-bokas’s house, only the bath-room still stands after Wednes-day’s tornado. His family has been able to salvage many of their photo-graphs and momen-toes.

CW | Brandee Easter

• Donate or sign up to volunteer: Central Church of Christ, 304 Hargrove Road, Tuscaloosa, Ala., 35401

Disaster Assistance at Central Church of Christ is serving hot meals to the neighborhood and accepting donations of toiletries and clothing.

• Sign up to volunteer: St. Matthias’ Episcopal Church, 2310 Skyland Boulevard, Tuscaloosa, AL, 35405, 205-553-7282

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