On April 27th, I woke up a 20 year old girl. As a sophomore at the Capstone, I was to attend several classes that day. Western Civ, Elementary math, and Women's Studies. We knew the weather was going to get bad that afternoon. After a phone call and a few texts to friends, my boyfriend at the time, and my mom, I went off to class, thinking nothing of the weather.
As a kid, we would sit in the back yard as the tornado sirens went off. Being from North Alabama, it was something that was totally normal. Through no fault of my parents', we just didn't know the magnitude of what a tornado could do, much less that a tornado could tear a mile wide stretch to pieces and take the lives of kids who had no idea it was coming. So... to my last class I went without hesitation or reservation.
My last class was to start at 3:30 in Manly Hall at UA. Formerly a dormitory for military students, Manly Hall consisted of 4 stories of staircases and doors to classrooms accessed from an open air balcony. It was old, a little run down, and very central to campus. I remember the sky turning a dusty, coal grey as I looked out the windows of the classroom. Not five minutes went by from that moment and I heard sirens. Emergency alerts. "This is an emergency alert from the University of Alabama. Please move to a ground floor room or a safe space. Do not drive."
I began the descent to the ground floor of Manly and across the parking lot and bus lane to Gorgas Library. Inside, I sat with other students who were stuck on campus. I don't know if it was the staff at the library or our own gut instincts, but we got in the staircase. All but one of us lost our WiFi connections. My classmate next to me was streaming the news out of Birmingham. "An EF4 tornado is headed straight for the campus and Bryant Denny Stadium of the University of Ala....." Blackness. She lost connection. We were sitting ducks.
Wind and rain slapped the outside of the building. In silent solitude, I heard prayers from a few students down. Cries for mercy. Begging for the tornado to skip over us. Tears.
And then silence.
Without really understanding what had happened, I walked outside the library toward my sorority house. My friends were there and were supposed to take me to my car. Little did I know at that point, half a mile away from where we huddled together in the library stairwell, the tornado's path had flattened a stretch of land that was so wide it was almost incomprehensible.
After an hour of driving around and seeing a small part of the death and devastation, I retreated to campus and to the dorm of my then boyfriend. I was in shock at what I had seen, but I had no idea just how bad it was yet.
That night, a friend and her boyfriend came to meet us to check in and make sure we were okay. Cell reception was down, so no one really knew if their loved ones were alive, injured, or trapped. As it turns out, her boyfriend had been pulling rubble off of dead bodies since the storm. Entire neighborhoods had been wiped off the map. In an audio clip I once heard, a 911 dispatcher asking a location of the caller. In response, the caller said, "I don't know where I am. There's no addresses anymore."
In the aftermath of one of the deadliest storms in American history, our town came together. I saw college students helping the elderly, professors moving logs off the road, and football players clearing trash out of the government housing. In discussing the aftermath, I learned of people thrown hundreds of yards from their homes, people being crushed in the rubble and dying because no one knew where they were.
I say all of those terrible, gut-wrenching details to say this: I realized I wasn't invincible on April 27, 2011. I learned I am a small speck in an ocean. I am tiny. I am breakable. I saw Mother Nature's true power. I saw people truly broken. I saw raw, real redemption.
I've told this story many times; to family, friends, and fellow survivors. I've relived that day every time a tornado siren goes off. I've experienced the grace I felt that day over and over again. And that grace, God's grace, is so good. I was spared that day. I am a lucky, lucky woman.
