Tornado Damage

Djarum

All-Pro
Location
Huntsville, AL
Name
Jason
My girlfriend and I finally were able to drive around about 5 miles north of where we live to see the Tornado Damage. Some of the images can be disturbing so I didn't want to post them in the thread. They can be found here:

Tornado Damage - SeriousCompacts.com Gallery

Most of the images up to picture number ending 396 were in more rural areas of Alabama. Much of this area is farmland, grassland, or just large fields. The houses that were on this land got hit pretty hard. Some of the mobile homes are just gone. Piles of cars pushed into modular or craft style homes. Most of this damage according to the NWS was caused by an EF3 winds in the tornado. There are also several pictures showing the tornado as it goes through trees and forrested areas.

This same tornado did actually move into a dense subdivision area. These pictures are from picture number 396 on up. These are actually really well built built brick homes that were built in the early to mid 90's. They are 2500 to 4000 square foot homes ranging from the 300K mark to the million dollar mark. Even as well built as these homes were, there was one single story brick home that was completly pushed off of the foundation and turned into rubble. There were some areas we could not go to because the damage was just that bad. The very last picture is what is left of an old "Piggly Wiggly" grocery store.

The NWS classified the tornado in a small stretch of this damaged area as an EF4-EF5 tornado.

The NWS has a track of the Tornado here:

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/hun/stormsurveys/2011-04-27/tracks/madison_county.png

I have personally seen CAT 2 hurricane damage in Florida. While the damage from a Hurricane is much larger and more flooding involved, I've never seen the total destruction that an EF4 to EF5 tornado can cause.

My friends and family were pretty lucky. In all, the Huntsville/Madison Community was lucky. If the Tornado had tracked just half a mile more south, it would have devastated dozens of densly packed subdivisions.
 
That's some amazing power Jason. We've had some much smaller tornados in our area - I remember driving around the southern part of our county with my daughter after a series of them about 10+ years ago and seeing trees torn out of the ground and roofs just GONE from the tops of houses. The power is truly frightening - and there's nothing you can really do if you don't have a storm celler other than to just be lucky when it comes through. And those storms were orders of magnitude smaller and less powerful than what you folks just went through. I think of all frightening weather events, tornados are the ones that scare me most, although I've never been in a powerful earthquake and I'd guess that would be at least as terrible.

Just glad you came through it OK and my heart goes out to those who didn't.

-Ray
 
Jason, thank you for adding these to the gallery - a powerful documentation of the destruction sustained by so many of your neighbors. It's important that we remember those in need.
 
Thank You all.

The sad part is there are several rural areas that aren't getting too much help. Even locally the problem is that it is taking insurance companies quite some time to sort things out. It could be months or years before the mess is cleaned up.
 
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