Tornado!!!

Last Wednesday, April 27, 28 tornados touched down in North Alabama, several more hit southern Alabama. One touched down a mile from our home. We are safe and our home is fine, we lost a big tree in the back yard, but feel grateful that was all. We did not have power or phone for 5 days, but we had running water and so it was not too bad. Here are some pictures from the last few days. We spent our days helping where we could. Today it was raining all day (not super helpful to the clean up effort), so I caught up on laundry, cleaning, and the backlog of mail and life that has been piling up for days.

We helped a widow up the street move some enormous white oaks from her driveway. She had a tree on her house and a guy driving by in a front end loader showed up just in time to help move the trunks off the driveway and get the tree off her house.

These pictures are in an area called Anderson Hills. We went here to help some members of the church remove some trees from their yard. When we were finished with that, we went to their neighbors and helped look through what was left of their home. We were looking for the lady's purse and other momentos. The roof was gone, the upstairs had collapsed on the downstairs and all the interior walls were gone. They had been in their car, moving it to the garage to avoid the hail damage when the tornado hit - the roof on the garage was the only thing left, moving their car saved their lives.

We went to another area just north of our house and helped pick up garbage, looking for personal belongings in a trailer park where there was nothing but piles left of houses.

At one of the houses we helped at, there was a 2x6 wedged in the ground. it took some effort to pull it out, it was in the ground 2 1/2 feet.

A sister in our ward had a tree on her house. We went over to help her out, there were a couple of other families there to help as well. James was on the house cutting the branches off the trunk, he was tethered to the house with climbing ropes. The rest of us were on the ground making a HUGE pile of branches and holding ropes to pull the branches off the house as James cut them off. It amazes me how big a pile trees on the ground can make, they look much smaller standing up right. Jacob and a couple other guys cut the trunk into smaller pieces, he is getting really good with a chainsaw.

These pictures are around the corner from our home. All the power lines are down and the brick homes along the street are leveled.

The National Guard came in. Fortunately we had plenty of water, fuel and food - that made all the difference.

After several days of helping others we decided the big tree in our backyard needed some attention. The kids were having a great time climbing on it, but the second trunk was starting to lean toward the pool. We trimmed it up, made another huge pile of branches. For now we plan to keep the tree that is down as a jungle gym for the kids. It is still attached at the roots so it may even grow, we'll see.

Our home phone is still out, but we have electricity now so things are looking up. We have a Stake Day of Service planned for Saturday so we will have more pictures to post from that next week.