Tornado Photos

Here are photos I took of an area know as Buck Island. It has become a very high end neighborhood with lots of million dollar places now. Tornado tracked about 3 miles right along the edge of the water.

My inlaws live across the lake on the other side and were not hit near as hard hit, but they are still out of power as of last night.

Buck Island Tornado Photos

The damage was so wide spread that for the first 4 or 5 days there were shortages of everything. Plenty of gasoline but no power to pump it. Some stations installed generators but then there would be huge lines to get it. Ice was like Gold! Milk? Can't find it. All the stores either sold out or shipped it out before it went bad. Flash light batteries were practically none existent. Essentials sold out as soon as they arrived. We drove 35 miles to another town trying to find ice and milk with no luck. That gives you an idea of how wide spread these storms were. Alabama was hit hard.

It is just amazing, Tornadoes are usually limited to on small area, might be miles long but a narrow track. This time it is just damage everywhere and of course not all tornado damage. But you can not drive 2 miles in any direction without seeing tree's down. roofs with tarps or some other sign of damage from these storms.

We are fortunate in that that most of these were not on the ground and the tree's did most of the damage falling on the house. But other areas all you see are foundations of where the house was. Please consider making a donation to the Red Cross or other charity. I remember 15 years ago when a tornado hit our neighborhood. Next day once the roads were open the Red Cross came through bringing hot meals. That was one of the best lunches I ever had.

Hope they restore power and things calm down there soon.

It is a difficult weather year for most of the south-east.
The eastern half of Arkansas is nearly at a stand-still because of flooding. So many roads are under water that east/west travel is coming to a halt.
Those tornados were historic. Prayers and thoughts go to the people still trying to recover.

Here's some pics of Independance Tube in Decatur. It was a heavy industrial plant, with overhead cranes, heavy beam crane rails/supports. You can see what's left. I haven't talked to anyone that worked there, but we were told at work that everyone was ok in the basement when the tornado hit. This is actually taken from the back our plant property, about 1mile from my office

You can see the 500kv towers in the background, there were about 40-50 of these down from the storms, and over 150 of the smaller 161kv towers down after the storms from what I was told. They're still working on the big towers. The power line guys are amazing though, some of them are working 7 days a week, 15 hrs a day getting power lines restrung.

This is the EF5 tornado that started around smithville, MS, through hackleberg, mount hope, phil campbell, tanner, and harvest areas. Not real sure where it finally stopped, but it just amazed me when I saw this plant. Houses didnt' have a chance against this thing.

My Brother-in-law was one of the guys that built those big towers for TVA. Not to long ago he transferred to another department but he has been volunteered and is out in the field string lines and will be be building towers for a while. I think I read TVA had 96 (or close to that) main feeders down. They can get temps up pretty quick but it's going to take some time to rebuild the permanent structures.

Coming back home from service at The Rock last night we got a call. It was In-Laws. They just had the power turned back on.... after NINE DAYS!

I didn't take any pictures, but we think one of those little twisters passed within a quarter mile of my house... there's a church just down the road and the tornado passed across the field behind the church, then snapped off a 20-30 inch diameter cedar and an equal sized maple in front of an old house that sits across the road... passed around the house, snapped another three to the side of the house, then around the back side to get another tree... doesn't appear to be any damage to the old house. It's been abandoned for years, and my neighbor said the inside is pretty rotted away, but still a neat looking old house... we had some wind howling around our place and lost power and phones for a little over 24 hours...

There was a mobile home sitting on the highway into town that got hit... fortunately the residents were at work and not home... most of the house lay in the front yard, but the under pinning frame work, which is 6-8 inch steel I-beams, was across the highway, twisted like a pretzel.... the site where the house sat was totally cleaned except for the concrete blocks that were used as foundation blocks.... the owners put a sign in the front yard that read "Yard sale"....