Alabama Tornadoes!

[LoALAnna]

Bama, Thank God your cousin is OK! I'm still having a hard time reconciling that this disaster happened right here, so close to home!

On another note--one of our newer members-neeney50-lives in one of the areas in GA/TN that was hit hard, too. She lives in Cloudland, GA and I have been unable to get in contact with her, due in part that power is out in that area.
Her sister lives and owns a grooming shop in Guntersville, AL. The street and area of her shop (Blount Ave) was directly hit by the tornado. I'm praying HARD that neither of them was hurt! Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers!

[BamaFan121s]

My friend just sent me this video he put together of what he caught on camera. He lives in Tuscaloosa, in the heart of where this big tornado hit. (They climbed out from under that Jeep!) It starts with footage of them under a house as it came over, then to them crawling out and running around just after, and then to going back the next day. It's really jerky at first when they are trying to climb out from under the debris, but gets better.

YouTube - Adam Melton, Jessica Colburn,...

[jencar98]

OMG....Misty, the terror in the voices during the tornado gave me chills. I've seen lots of new video coverage but none of it has done as well as your friends video to convey the extent of the devastation. Sadly, it is so much more real, coming from someone that actually lived there and through it. I'm amazed at their calmness as they drive through town describing the scene. Thank God they are alive to show this video. My heart goes out to all, so much suffering

[JESSY_RN2B]

Omg, how awful. So glad you all are safe

[JDS]

I live in North AL. We were fortunate & suffered no damage in our neighborhood. However, just a few miles away there is major devastation. It is completely unreal to me. I have never seen such devastation in my life. My husband and I heard one tornado as it went by & saw debri falling all over our yard. It was eerie & extremely sad. I knew it was bad, but I still wasn't prepared for the images I have seen of the damage. Our schools have been closed since the storms & still remain closed.

[yorkieusa]

That is so terrifying.

Yesterday they said 458 people were still missing. Has this number been changed? Anyone know? I just can't imagine!

[BabyGirl Rosie]

Originally Posted by yorkieusa

That is so terrifying.

Yesterday they said 458 people were still missing. Has this number been changed? Anyone know? I just can't imagine!

Isn't it up to over 350 deaths? This is just so very sad. And to have love ones missing has to be very hard.

[BamaFan121s]

Yes, his video gave me chills too. He actually did an interview with CNN the day afterwards. Said that he and some of the others there could here other people screaming for help and started digging to pull people out from under the buildings before the EMAs got there. I've saw the aftermath of and F5 that came through in 1998. That's one of those things you never forget. I saw firsthand some of the damage Saturday in Fultondale--not even one of the most damaged area--and it was unbelievable. It's really almost more than your mind can even comprehend when you see it with your own eyes.

Not sure how many are still missing, I know quite a few, but not in the 400s anymore. Last night was actually the first that the fatality count didn't go up overnight. Said on the radio this AM that the count in AL alone is 252 and 340 overall.

[BamaFan121s]

Here is a map of the paths of confirmed tornadoes that came through that evening. (I did notice there was an error on the map though--the pink lines are EF4+.) There was also one that came through Vestavia/Cahaba Heights at 6AM that morning that isn't on there that was classified as an F3. See the black line that runs through Shelby Co? We live right in the area where the line was broken--right on top of the "S" in the word Shelby. So one ended right before it got to us and the other literally picked up, jumped us and then sat back down!

[yorkieusa]

Originally Posted by BabyGirl Rosie

Isn't it up to over 350 deaths? This is just so very sad. And to have love ones missing has to be very hard.

I'm not talking about confirmed deaths. I'm talking about those still missing and unaccounted.

[megansmomma]

Wow Misty! That was unbelievable and I cannot imagine being there when it happened. Thank God they are safe after having their entire home crash down on top of them. What devastation and destruction the tornadoes caused.

[BabyGirl Rosie]

Originally Posted by yorkieusa

I'm not talking about confirmed deaths. I'm talking about those still missing and unaccounted.

I am sorry. I knew that you were talking about missing. I had just heard about the deaths too. Didn't mean to cause confusion.

[yorkieusa]

Originally Posted by BabyGirl Rosie

I am sorry. I knew that you were talking about missing. I had just heard about the deaths too. Didn't mean to cause confusion.

Not a problem! I'm resting now and I think I'll see if I can find any new information. I've been too busy today to do any searching.

[yorkieusa]

Reporting from Tuscaloosa, Ala.—

Police investigator Wade Elmore answered the phone.

On the line was the father of 21-year-old Latoya Brown. He hadn't heard from his daughter since she left home Wednesday to visit a shopping center directly in the path of a tornado that smashed into the city.

"OK, and nobody's talked to her since?" Elmore asked Monday. A pause. "Is it normal for her to be gone for a night or two at a time?"

He scribbled the answers on a sheet of paper.

Tuscaloosa's roll of the missing, which has contracted and expanded like an accordion in the five days since the tornado struck, grew one name longer.

Elmore is one of a dozen police officers pulling 12-hour shifts in the city's effort to locate hundreds of people reported missing. They work the phones and type into laptops at police headquarters, struggling to separate the temporarily out-of-touch from the truly missing — and feared dead.

It is a tedious and often frustrating task. As soon as a missing college student is found couch-surfing at a buddy's house, an office manager calls to say that an employee hasn't been heard from since Wednesday.

The official number of missing, which was as low as 10 early on, stood at 326 Monday night, said Tuscaloosa Mayor Walter Maddox. Asked whether he believed at least some names would ultimately prove to be fatalities, the mayor took a deep breath and replied:

"I'm prayerful, but the longer we go through this, the more I'm concerned that the final number will be more devastating than we could ever imagine."

Police have cleared 676 names from the list of people previously reported missing. But no sooner are names stricken than fresh reports flow in to swell the list again.

Sgt. Tim Guy, who oversees the effort, said the list was less a roster of truly missing people and more a compendium of "unable to locate." Police have gotten calls about missing people from friends or relatives in England, Norway and Iceland.

"We've had people calling about long-lost cousins or people they thought used to live here," Guy said, adding that some have called about friends they haven't seen in years.

In many cases, it turns out the person on the list doesn't live in Tuscaloosa. One family that a friend thought was missing had moved to Texas.

Often, the team is able to locate someone missing with a simple phone call, Guy said.

But with thousands of homes destroyed, power knocked out and some phone lines still down, many aren't reachable by phone.

In that event, officers ask search and rescue teams to look for people at their last known locations. But the tornado hit at 5 p.m. — rush hour — and many people don't know exactly where their loved ones were.

Tuscaloosa is a college town full of young people with shallow roots in the place. It also has a significant elderly population that is difficult to track on the Internet.

In some cases, when officers have good information that a missing person was in one of the hardest-hit areas of town at the time of the storm, the city dispatches cadaver-sniffing dogs.

That's what happened Sunday, when a team of search dogs and firefighters scoured a leveled apartment complex in Tuscaloosa looking for Marcus Smith, 22, whose family was certain he was in his apartment as the tornado bore down on the city. They hadn't heard from him since.

Just after 3 p.m., the dogs helped the team find Smith's remains. He became the storm's 40th fatality in Tuscaloosa County.

The search teams were back at it Monday. By midafternoon, no more bodies had been recovered.

Tuscaloosa Fire and Rescue Sgt. Shawn Morrow, a member of the recovery team that found Smith's body, said his gut tells him that most people reported missing won't be found in the city's enormous mounds of rubble.

"If there were 700 or 800 bodies out here, we'd be falling all over them," Morrow said.

In a golf cart Monday afternoon, Morrow traced the path of the storm, stopping to ask residents whether all their neighbors were accounted for.

On the northeastern edge of Tuscaloosa, where the city gives way to pretty hills dotted with oak and pine trees, Morrow sidled up to a couple clearing wood in their front yard.

"Have you got everybody accounted for?" he asked.

The man nodded. "We're all OK," he said. "Just the cat's missing."

In addition to the city's list of missing, the Tuscaloosa News on Sunday published three pages of pleas from people seeking missing friends and relatives — more than 900 names. Other appeals have appeared on Facebook.

The Times randomly called more than a dozen names from the Tuscaloosa News and Facebook lists. In every case, people who had submitted names said those feared missing had since been located.

Guy said he expected that most of the people now listed as missing would be found. He hoped to pare another 150 names from the list by the end of the day Monday with the help of a computer program created by an information technology team at the University of Alabama.

Sometimes clearing the names provides a special satisfaction. After the storm, worried members of a local church called police with the names of an elderly couple they said was missing.

Guy found it easy to cross the couple's names off the list, for he happened to know they were very much alive. They were his grandparents.

Alabama tornadoes: Tuscaloosa police help people seek hundreds missing after tornadoes - latimes.com