'We aren't complaining': Amid tornado's ruin in Autauga County, gratitude reigns
PRATTVILLE — The soundtrack of recovery from the deadly Autauga County tornado is the high-pitched whine of chainsaws, the hum of generators and the throaty growl of heavy equipment.
A powerful EF-3 tornado, packing winds of 150 miles per hour, touched down in the central part of the county just after noon on Jan. 12. The storm left seven dead, more than a dozen injured and hundreds of homes and buildings that were destroyed or badly damaged.
About a week after the storm, progress is being made.
“It’s better than last week, that’s for sure,” Sandy Wilson said Thursday. Wilson lives off County Road 57, where his barn and the roof of his home were heavily damaged.
Wilson was using his John Deere front-end loader to move downed trees to the side of the road on Thursday. “We got the roof tarped on Friday, and we had plenty of help cutting up trees. It’s not ideal, but we are in so much better shape than so many others.
“So we aren’t complaining.”
The spirit of thankfulness may seem out of place in a disaster of this proportion, but that’s the underlying feeling in this storm zone. This is a close-knit, self-reliant community. Just about everybody knows everybody else. People are counting their blessings and are thankful for the outpouring of help they have received from friends and strangers.
“On Monday, there was a guy driving around sharpening chainsaws off the back of his pickup,” Carrie Hunt said. She lives on County Road 68 in the Marbury area, one of the hardest hit parts of the county. “He had a small generator in the back and a sharpening machine. He said he was off for the holiday but he just wanted to come up here and help.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get his name, or even where he was from. But something like that really helps when you have all these trees to cut up and move.”
The path of the tornado is obvious: Just follow miles of downed, broken and shattered trees. Then you find spots of damaged or destroyed homes. Sheets of metal dangle from delimbed trees. Here, a hot water heater rests in the middle of a hayfield. Over there, a Bible sits atop a mound of insulation.
Where homes were destroyed, pitiful piles of belongings salvaged from the debris are protected by blue tarps. What made up peoples’ lives are heaped up by the road, ready to be hauled away.
The scope of the damage is still not known. In the storm zone, there are 1,151 address points. This is the rural part of the county, so each address could have one or more homes; most have barns, sheds or other outbuildings.
The National Weather Service office in Birmingham said the storm spawned an EF-3 tornado with peak winds of 150 m.p.h. It touched down at 12:48 p.m., east of Vida in central Autauga County. It dissipated at 2:08 p.m., one mile east of Penton in Chambers County, which borders Georgia. The track was 76.67 miles long, with the widest of its path at 1,500 yards. That’s about an eighth of a mile.
The path covered portions of Autauga, Elmore, Coosa, Tallapoosa and Chambers counties. A supercell thunderstorm, formed out ahead of a squall line, spawned the Autauga County storm. It was the same supercell that produced an EF-2 tornado that struck Dallas County about a half-hour earlier in the day.
That tornado had winds of 130 miles per hour and caused widespread destruction in Selma. There were no fatalities in that tornado, which was on the ground for 22.72 miles and was 800 yards at its widest point.
The deaths in Autauga County occurred in the Old Kingston community. The Autauga County Sheriffs Department identified them Tuesday:
Robert Gardner Jr., 70, and Deanna Marie Corbin 59, of the 800 block of Sandy Ridge Road.
Christopher Allen Corbin Jr., 46, and Tessa Celeste Desmet, 21, of the 1000 block of Sandy Ridge Road. They were related to Gardner and Corbin.
Carmen Cox Autrey, 59, of the 1000 block of Sandy Ridge Road
Andrea Sue Taylor, 61, of the 800 block of County Road 140
Solomon Antonio Smith, 50, of the 900 block of County Road 140
The recovery will be a long-term effort, said Ernie Baggett, director of the Autauga County Emergency Management Agency. Autauga County has been deemed a federal disaster area, which means a host of federal resources are available. If your property sustained damage, register with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Baggett said.
“We have FEMA representatives going door-to-door today, and that will continue,” Baggett said. “You have 60 days to register after the federal disaster declaration, but you don’t need to wait. Register now.
“Even is you don’t live in the tornado zone — if your roof was damaged by straight line winds during the storm — you need to register to see if you are eligible for assistance.”
People and business owners who sustained losses in the designated areas can apply for disaster assistance at www.DisasterAssistance.gov, by calling 800-621-3362 or by using the FEMA App.
Federal funding for emergency work in Autauga and Dallas counties is also available to state, eligible local governments and certain private nonprofit organizations on a cost-sharing basis. Federal funding is also available on a cost-sharing basis for hazard mitigation measures statewide.
Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Marty Roney at mroney@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Work continues in Alabama town devastated by tornado that killed 7
