Wrath of god stuff, basically

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WENDSDAY morning, 4_27_11, and I am watching with my father as a tornado
dances through CULLMAN, ALA, and from this slightly elevated view you can see
power transformers popping like firecrackers. LATER we watch from a tower cam on a
hill as a dark cloud marches into town, and I watch as a too wide finger touches the ground...
I know what that is. So after getting dad into the hall closet, covering him with pillows,
I step out front(I know, stupid) because I am not going to miss this.
You hear it first, not the sound of a train, more like the sound of a thousand
trains, and then it peeks from behind a tree, a mile wide grey-black tower, debri
circling like supplicants worshiping a mad god. IT PASSES, and takes modern
civilization with it, everything, power, net, cable.
My dad starts freaking after a while, because we can't find mom. I try calming him,
thinking I will have to sit on him to keep him at the house. Eventually mom shows up,
four hours late. NOBODY I know was seriously hurt, and I thank god for that.
But places I have roamed my entire life, some of them are gone, along with 40
souls, with another 459 missing, probably all dead.
Alberta city, FOREST LAKE, Rosedale courts, fifteenth street, Milos, where they were
having a children's birthday party(still don't know where they are).
As I drove along HARGROVE ROAD the next day, I couldn't believe it. HARRIED
PEOPLE , some digging through the rubble, some just sitting around, crying, a
long line of cars slowly passing through. I make it through to HARDEES downtown,
and after an hour or so, get some food. It takes an hour to get to my exit three miles away,
and I ask the good officer guarding it, who checks my ID, "what is that big chunk of metal
on the side of 359 over there"? HE replies that it "used to be TAMKO," the roofing tile plant.
SATURDAY, as I watch the birds feed in the back yard, I hear the refrigerator kick on,
and I run into the living room, the lights are back on, the cable and net followed the next afternoon. NEVER taking those for granted again. And thank god for natural gas water
heaters, a real shower helps, even if taken by candlelight.
Going to work twenty four miles away, noticed the power was still out, coming home the
next morning, after sunrise, I STOP on the side of lock road, and am further amazed.
THERE is a mile or so wide swath in the forest, ragged tree stumps where the tornado cut
a path on its way to JEFFERSON county, also destroying a power company work shed
and transformer farm on the way.
SEEING a caravan of boom trucks from all over driving down the highway later is an awesome sight, modern civilization is something to be proud of, being a puny human doesn't feel so puny any more.
Tuscaloosa, PRATT city, CULLMAN, others, several towns got hit, some wiped out
completely . Some are gone forever.
So you thank god, not for what he did, because he didn't do this, but you thank him for
what he spared, Fourty to five hundred are dead, in TUSCALOOSA alone, but it could have been a lot worse.
THE WEATHERMEN and women get a tad overzealous sometimes, but it would not be an understatement to say that they saved thousands with their warnings.
THANKS to my friends on this site for your concern, it is appreciated , and thanks to god
for hearing my prayers and keeping that thing on a straight path. A right turn and it would have killed thousands, including me.
IT will take years to recover, but we will do so.
One thing we will never do, however, is forget.
Like you ever could, when its etched on the faces of the survivors, and carved into
the very city itself.