Tornado leaves two dead in Montgomery, several homes damaged
A tornado tore through the Flatwood community at around 3:30 a.m. Wednesday in north Montgomery County, leaving two people dead and several houses damaged throughout the area.
In the 300 block of Williams Drive, a family was left with two members dead and a third in the hospital, authorities said.
The deceased are a 39-year-old woman and her 8-year-old son. The father is in the hospital.
According to a preliminary storm survey by the National Weather Service in Birmingham, an EF-2 tornado with winds of 115 miles per hour caused the destruction in the Flatwood community. The tornado was part of a storm front that moved through Mississippi and Alabama late Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning.
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Pastor Marcus Boyd opened his church Union Academy Baptist to people affected by the tornado. The church is at 4748 Lower Wetumpka Road.
Boyd woke up at about 4 a.m. and immediately started checking on people in the community.
About 15 people took shelter at Union Academy Baptist on Wednesday morning including four women who all had damage to their homes from the tornado.
The storm hit Cynthia McKenney's home the hardest of the four.
McKenney said she was lying in bed when the noise outside became silent. It was quickly followed by the roar of the wind.
“It sounded like a locomotive just coming," McKenney said.
She ran to the bathroom for cover, and then all the lights in her home went out. McKenney tried to look out the window, but it was blocked by a fallen tree.
When she emerged from her home, she discovered that a tree had fallen on her car and that her back patio was missing.
“It’s bad," McKenney said flipping through photos of her home on her phone.
Jamelle McGhee is McKenney's aunt and next-door neighbor. McGhee ran into her bathroom, and her grandson took cover in the hallway when the tornado struck.
While the home that McGhee lives in had little destruction, the two houses she owns and uses for storage were hit much harder.
In one of the houses, the wind threw the roof off in two bedrooms, leaving the rooms open to the rain that consistently poured last night.
“Thank God we all were safe," McGhee said.
Julia Davis lives in a mobile home on Williams Drive. She credits prayer with keeping her safe during the storm.
“I started praying, 'Lord save us,' " Davis said.
Davis said she kept her eyes closed tight while she huddled with her sister in the hallway of their mobile home.
Davis said she, “felt like the trailer was just ready to get up and go."
“And if I hadn’t prayed this morning there’s no telling where I’d been," Davis said.
Most people in the area sustained some damage from the tornado. But the storm completely leveled the Flatwood Community Center, said Clarence Shuler, who is a deacon at an area church.
The center was a place where the people of Flatwood could come together for activities that range from quilting to exercise.
“We really need a lot of help down here," said Doris Shuler, who also lives in the area. She later added, “We just never seen this much damage with the lives that have been lost too."
Shuler called on Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and President Joe Biden for help in the aftermath of the tornado.
“It did a lot of damage to the neighborhood," Shuler said.
This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Montgomery tornado leaves two people dead, homes damaged
