Thursday, April 28, 2011

Best Wishes to The Storm-Damaged

As far as I know, all my family and friends are ok bar some flooding in my brother's house.  My thoughts and prayers go out to all those who lost family, friends, or property.  It hits home pretty hard when you know the areas affected - where my brother lives and I lived for years in North Alabama, there's a lot of damage.  I also went to library school at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.  The University is relatively undamaged, but McFarlane Blvd., which was so heavily damaged, is the main drag through Tuscaloosa.

The only time I remember equal to it was the many tornadoes of April 1974, which devastated a line from Ohio to North Alabama.  I was a teenager, and my family had a pizza restaurant in Athens, Alabama.  The storms were so bad that my Mom brought home a customer who was traveling and couldn't get any farther and he spent the night with us.  Some of our employees in the restaurant spent the next morning digging another of our employees and his family out of their destroyed house.  No serious injury except to our employee who required surgery on his back..  My mom and I went and viewed some of the damage in the county and what I most remember are the peach orchards in flinders and huge power towers, built to withstand wind speeds of hundreds of miles an hour, lying crumpled on the ground like a giant's discarded toys.

So my thoughts are very much with those affected today.

Posted via email from reannon's posterous

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