It felt like a Monday. We awoke to storms, had a bit of a reprieve for most of the day (even sunny at times), and ended our day with some of the most violent weather I have ever seen in Alabama. I simply can not focus on interior design today. Instead, I am thinking of all the loss of life and property damage that occurred here in Alabama.
Yesterday afternoon I watched a live news feed via sky cam, as a tornado, roughly a mile wide, churned into the downtown area of Tuscaloosa, Alabama on it's way towards my family in Birmingham. I simply cannot begin to describe how that makes you feel.
Here is some amateur footage of the terror.
Did you notice how breathless the man filming the storm was? You could hear him breathing as he watched the devastation. I can only imagine what was going through his mind.
I have never seen live footage of something so onerous knowing it would be a matter of minutes before it was in my city. For those of you not in Birmingham, Tuscaloosa is about 45 minutes southwest of Birmingham, Alabama. It is a college town, home of the University of Alabama and our weather always comes from that direction.
Gratefully, my family and home were spared the devastation. The storm moved a bit to the north, and we escape the destruction by a matter of miles. Others were not so lucky.
During the waiting to see if we would receive the blunt of it, I had family calling from other cities, saying prayers for us and asking if we were ok.
Although I am grateful for our current technology, at the moment it was occurring, it scared the life out of me. Also, the aftermath footage which we were able to see even before the storm reached us . . . was simply devastating.
For those those of you reading my blog for the first time, I try to always post about light hearted interior design topics that take you away from reality, if only for a few minutes in your day. But today, I simply don't have it in me.
I feel so thankful that my family is safe and so very sad for those who lost loved ones and their homes. As my husband pointed out, this storm will go down in history for our state. I think the recovery will take years. Please keep the Southeast in your thoughts and prayers. We are going to need it.
I will be back to interior design as soon as my brain can refocus. M.
