Remembering April 27, 2011

I’m posting this today because tomorrow is my boyfriend’s birthday and I will be damned if I spend the second year in a row unable to celebrate out of sadness or fear.

I live in Tuscaloosa, AL. On April 27, 2011 I was a freshman, still living in a dorm on campus, on the fourth floor. My boyfriend was a freshman too, living in a dorm just across the street from mine. We were celebrating his 19^th birthday. We got up, and he opened his presents. We went to class. We came back and had an argument at his place. I don’t even remember what it was about. We were so mad at each other that he dropped me back off at my dorm and then went out to lunch without me. Or was it class? I don’t remember.

I was angry. I stayed in my room, played around on the computer. Got an email from the university around noon that we were expecting severe weather later in the day, that all classes after 12 were cancelled. No big deal, I thought. We had been getting severe weather threats and tornado watches almost once a week for a month before that day. Plus, I had the added bonus of being from Northern Virginia and completely able to write off severe weather. We never have severe weather. Last time there was any kind of tornado anything in the area, I was really little and my mom made me move my crafts to the middle of the living room, instead of being next to the windows. Unprepared didn’t even begin to cover it.

Another email from the university came later in the day. Really severe weather. Be prepared. Big tornados. I was slightly concerned, so I texted a friend on the first floor, letting him know that I was going to just hang out in his room if the sirens went off. This was at about three pm.

I didn’t even have time to finish the text before the sirens erupted. I grabbed my computer and my phone, and hustled downstairs. My roommate stayed in her room, thinking it was nothing. I wasn’t taking my chances.

We were huddled in his roommate’s room, watching the weather channel in horror as it became apparent that we were not getting out of this one scot-free. We watched storm cells hit one city after another, watched the weatherman rattle off names of new towns every five minutes that were about to get pummeled. We learned about the devastation that had taken place earlier in the day. We had no idea. I watched the roommate’s girlfriend dissolve into frantic tears as the weatherman announced the name of her hometown. I watched her start to panic when we realized it was coming at us. I stood in the doorway of the room, watched her frantically rip sheets off his mattress, watched her carry it into the living room. I didn’t know what to do. I was frozen.

I turned and went back into my friends’ room, and stared out the window. The university police were driving around campus with their sirens blaring. I don’t know if I texted Matt. I texted my mom, who wouldn’t realize the severity of the situation until 10:00 that night. I texted my cousin, who lives in Huntsville, works in the same building as the storm chasers, and who was giving me updates and information faster than the TV could. Who was also worried she was about to get hit herself. And when I looked back out the window, I saw that the trees were parallel to the ground. I saw that the sky was green. I turned to my friend, who is a Tuscaloosa native and is very prepared for such situations, and pointed out the window. He simultaneously shut the blinds, pulled me by the back of my shirt away from the window, and shoved me into the hallway.

We huddled, and waited. I was scared. I think I cried a little, but mostly I just shook. We had the mattress. I had my phone. I couldn’t get texts out or in, except at extremely sparse intervals. I didn’t know where Matt was. I didn’t know how long we had until it would hit. I didn’t know anything.

Someone shut the storm doors to the hallway. There were people who stayed in the lobby, surrounded by the glass windows, opting instead to watch for the twister.

Then it happened. The lights flickered and went out. Everyone went silent. We heard a rumbling noise, like people were running back and forth on the hallway above us. But no one was up there. And then we heard the people in the lobby scream. Long earth-shattering screams, like they were staring death in the face. We heard them screaming that it had touched down by an academic building just a minute’s walk from our dorm. We braced ourselves. We waited. And nothing happened.

The lights stayed out. The rumbling faded. We waited for half an hour before anyone was brave enough to just venture into one of the rooms off of the hallway, to see if they could look out the window. I don’t know if we ever got an all-clear. Maybe we just knew because the sirens had stopped. Somehow, I got to my feet and ran outside. I ran to Matt’s dorm. It was fine. He was fine. We were shaken up, but okay. The fight was forgotten. Campus was fine. The worst damage were tree limbs down. We had no idea what had happened to the rest of Tuscaloosa.

We heard rumors that McFarland Blvd had some damage. We got in my SUV and decided to drive down and look. Everyone else had the same idea. It took me 30 minutes to get to the edge of campus, where we were turned back by police officers. “We’re quarantining the area,” they said. “You are interfering with the rescue effort.” We turned back. Finally, pictures started coming in. And we saw the damage. The tornado had touched down barely a mile from campus, just missing us and the hospital. It had hit tons of residential properties. The infrastructure of the city was gone. Impossible to say when power would come back. Impossible to say who was alive and who was gone. No one could tell.

We went back to Matt’s dorm and made a plan. Get food. Get water. Get gas. Then we’ll figure everything else out. I piled 6 other people into my SUV and drove us all to a CiCi’s Pizza in Northport, a town that hadn’t gotten hit. At this point the dining halls had announced that they were out of food. We stuffed ourselves, then went to a gas station and got gas and water. We charged our phones in my car. We resolved to sit and wait together in Matt’s dorm.

Not long after we made this plan, night fell. We gathered around a mega-flashlight, ten of us, maybe more, just sitting together. Sometimes we talked. Sometimes we said nothing. What was there to say? No one knew what to do. A friend of ours was worried. His hometown was rumored to have been hit. He was panicking. “We have to go out there,” he said, ready to go move heaven and earth. “We have to find people and we have to help them. They’re trapped out there. We have to. It’s our city.” No one said anything. I turned to him and said that we had to let the rescue workers do their jobs. And what would he do if he saw a dead person? A child? He wasn’t ready to see that. None of us were. He chose to wait with the rest of us.

Suddenly, it started pouring outside. Thundering, lightening. A girl rushed in with her laptop, the only one that still had battery. “Another one!” she screamed. ”There’s another one coming at us!” We lost it. We had beaten the odds through one tornado, no one is lucky enough to beat two in one day. We knew that. People were running around, down to the first floor, calling neighbors that were even lower on a hill slope than we were, and could we stay with them? We paced around, not knowing what to do, not hearing any sirens, and questioning if they would even work after the day’s earlier events. Finally, we called 911. There was nothing else to do. We didn’t want to take away from the rescue effort, but if there was another twister, we didn’t want to add to the amount of people that needed rescuing.  There wasn’t. We were in the clear.

Matt called his aunt, who lives in Prattville, AL., a town that wasn’t hit. He asked if we could drive the hour and a half and come stay the night. We were concerned that if another tornado developed, we wouldn’t hear about it without electricity. She told us no, to wait where we were and come as soon as it was light out the next day. She didn’t want us out on roads that could be blocked in the middle of the night. I lost it. I had been strong and rational through the whole ordeal, but when I realized I also had to get myself through the night, I lost it. I was ready to have an adult come in and make my decisions for me. I was exhausted. I didn’t want to continue to be the only person that could affect whether I lived or died. I was done. 

Matt and I lay on his bed, not saying anything, just waiting to see the sunrise so we could get on the road, and get out of Tuscaloosa. The university had already announced that classes were cancelled on Thursday. We waited, and then we drove to Prattville, a couple of shaken refugees from a nightmarish experience.

Part 2: The Aftermath

If Wednesday was the worst day of my life, Thursday was a close second. It was starting to sink in, what we had been through, how lucky we were. During the experience we were scared, but we were also filled with adrenaline. We made decisions on a minute-to-minute basis, and we thought very little about the implications of everything. Thursday was when we had to start picking up the pieces.

I texted everyone I could think of to make sure they were alright. I called my mother. I emailed my family. I posted on facebook and twitter, to let people know that I had survived. But mostly I just sat on the couch and watched endless amounts of the news, sobbing intermittently and balling tissues in my fists. Matt couldn’t reach one of his friends. I watched him call the Red Cross and the check-in sites the school had set up, with no luck. We later learned that he had just driven home immediately and wasn’t able to contact anyone. I cried for the possibility that he was gone. I cried for the people who were unable to contact loved ones, who really were gone. I listened to Ashley Harrison’s heart-wrenching story, and I cried for her, and her boyfriend, and her family. I cried for how lucky I was that I still had Matt, and I cried imagining what it would be like to lose him. I cried for my city. I cried for Alabama.

The university announced that Thursday that finals were cancelled, that the water was not potable, and that everyone needed to move off of campus, immediately. We made a plan to move out, driving back to campus Friday, spending the night in Prattville, and driving to Cincinnati (where Matt’s from) Saturday. I couldn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t sleep alone that whole next week. I couldn’t go out without feeling guilty, because I could go home to a house that was in one piece and a town that was functioning perfectly, when so many of my fellow students didn’t have that option. How can you go to a party when you know that a city you care about is desperately scrambling for a sense of normalcy in the wake of a disaster? I couldn’t. I couldn’t stand knowing that I couldn’t help.

And now, a year later, we’re still looking for a sense of normalcy. The state came together and helped. We’re cleaning up. We’re rebuilding. Now, instead of lots full of twisted rubble, we have empty lots with yellow permits on stakes in the middle. Permits that mean it’s okay to rebuild. It’s okay to move on. It’s okay to fill up this area with houses and people and joy again. It’s okay. It will be okay.

We are Tuscaloosa, and we survived.


To see more information about Ashley Harrison's scholarship fund, click here.
For more information on donating to disaster relief efforts, click here.