15 Seconds ..

That's all it took for this

(taken a few miles from my home)

to go through my neighborhood and leave this...

So...Rich & I (and my brother and his wife) left Tuesday afternoon for Bike Week, a day early to beat the rain and storms that were predicted for North and Central Alabama. We rode late into the night before stopping South of Montgomery to sleep; then on to PCB on Wed. around noonish.

While high-fiving ourselves that we skirted the storms and arrived safely, Alabama was being hit my multiple tornadoes (EF4 and EF5). Around 4pm Wednesday our daughter calls from underneath our basement stairs, frightened, as she listens to the tornado raging outside our home in the neighborhood below (our house sits on the side of a hill). It was over in 15 seconds - taking one life and totally destroying approx. 50 homes and severly damaging at least that many.

We started receiving texts and pictures the next day (Thurs) - the pictures just didn't do the actual any justice at all. Our home sustained minor damage (some roof damage, downed pine trees, shutters and window screens blown off, debris from other areas..) and electricity for most all of North Alabama was out. Knowing our home was safe in the hands of our neighbors, we made the decision to stay where we were until Sunday (the kids and their spouses drove down on Friday to join us).

The ride home was....almost sickening. There was complete dread of seeing what we knew to be true. Once we got to our little community and began to see a fraction of the damage done our hearts just sank. We rode in to our neighborhood and were met by a police officer from Mobile, AL..we had to tell him that we lived in the neighborhood before we could go in. Once we got into the streets all we could do was stop and cry. It was so surreal...still is.

We jumped in to help with our little neighborhood food/water/ice station - cooking meals and delivering them to the masses that were glass-eyed, picking through the rubble that used to be their homes trying to find anything that they could salvage. We listened to stories, we shared and we cared for our own.

Without electricity (still without - the utility company hasn't been able to get into the neighborhood to replace the broken and lost poles/lines) we haven't been able to follow news and email (much less blog) but we know there are so many towns and communities completely obliterated and there was much loss of life. When I've grown tired of heating water on a cook stove just to take a lukewarm bath, or having to grab a flashlight or oil lamp to get dressed, or start to whine about not having internet or tv, I look out my back window to the streets below.

We are blessed and grateful!