April 27, 2011 will forever be in Alabama's history! There was only about 20 min from 5:00am to late into the night that our weather folks were not on our TVs. It was crazy! My family is very blessed in that we were not affected by damage. We actually didn't even have much rain here, but the north part of our county was hit hard. Our neighborhood was without power for 4.5 days.
I had the TV on all day. Weather has always fascinated me. By late afternoon it was actually getting closer to us. We even sat in the bathroom during one tornado warning. It was the only one close to us. After that storm, we decided to quickly make dinner and hope we could finish before another one came. Well, the power went out right as we were finishing up. We ate dinner with candles and the backdoor open to let the light shine in. The phones were still working at this point.
We were very ill prepared for bad weather! Our radio didn't have batteries. We scrounge up a few flash lights. We decided to just let the kids camp in a tent in the living room since everything was so out of the ordinary already. Joey sat in the van for a bit listening to the radio. I told my mom to call if we needed to go back in the bathroom. So, we all go to bed in the dark. The kids have a book flash light open in the living room to give them a night light.
The next morning we wake to no power and no telephone service. I could text but not make calls. It was a little surprising because we have had this happen before but the power always came on in the middle of the night. Joey had to leave for New Orleans. I got in the shower while all kiddos were occupied with something. My parents walk down and inform me that we will be without power for 4-5 days. WOW! I was shocked. I text Joey and tell him.
So, Joey gets 2 hours away and heads back to town. He had called the man he was meeting with that morning and told him what was going on and that they would have to re-schedule. He also called the Seminary and told them what was going on. They offered to up him to a 2 bedroom VIP apartment for the weekend for us for free. Now we just had to pray that we could get to Birmingham to get gas in my car. There were no open gas stations or power until just North of B'ham.
Joey got home; we loaded up, and God graciously brought us safely to New Orleans 12 hours after we left our house. We could see some damage as we drove to B'ham but not a whole lot. It wasn't even a glimpse at what was done to so many areas.
Here are some pictures of evening on April 27, 2011...
In the bathroom
I do not believe that I will ever forget that day or the following weekend.
So glad you are all OK! I was thinking about your crew.
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