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Go to the Tornado Pictures (Feb 08)

An F3 Tornado Damages Neighborhoods in Prattville  18 Feb 08

Lessons learned and suggestions for the future!

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I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you some of the things we learned as a community from this tragedy.

 I've personally learned not to take any weather warnings lightly! We all walk around with this "It couldn't happen to me" attitude, especially about storms. It always happens to someone else somewhere else, right? Wrong. We now know how the citizens of Enterprise Alabama feel after a tornado hit there just last year. Tornados happen! I can attest to how fast they can hit you without any warning and as you look at the pictures in this article, you can see the damage they can cause. This is all too real for the people of Overlook in Prattville Alabama now. We have learned the hard way to respect Mother Nature and the storms she can throw at us. We are the ones who are suffering now! It's not someone else or somewhere else, it's us and it's here!

Always be aware of the weather and never, ever disregard a warning! When your local weather agency tells you to take shelter, DO IT! Don't wait. My looking out my back window could well have cost me my life! I should have moved into the hallway and covered our heads with the mattresses from the beds, just like they tell us to do, as soon as I heard the warning siren. I should have stayed there. Next time, I might not be as lucky or as blessed as I was on this occasion.

Secure your valuables and Important Documents! One family, who was climbing through the rubble of their home of f of Shelia, just after the storm hit, were all looking for a floor safe that had been painted bright green. The lady of the family explained that she had lived through a tornado that destroyed their home in Texas and she learned to keep all of the family's valuables and important papers in one place and in a container that could possibly survive intact from a storm like this one or from a fire. They found the bright green colored safe with their name and address painted on the lid on the corner across the street in a pile of rubble. It was beat up and scratched all over, but it was still locked and had kept the dirt and water out. They used their combination and opened the safe. She had even thought well enough in advance to put some cash in there for use in times like these. They were secure in the thought that they knew exactly where their insurance papers were along with all of the other documents they would need to start life over again. Think about it. Where are your insurance papers, social security cards, checkbooks, credit card information, medical records, prescription information, birth certificates, retirement documents, and any other important documents that you will need to get things going again? If you have them assembled, good for you! Imagine what would happen to them in a storm like the one we just had if they are scattered throughout your house and not contained in a survivable container like a safe? Imagine all the red tape you'll have to go through to get all of those documents replaced! Do what they did and Secure your valuables and Important Documents today!

Keep your Cell Phone charged and Fresh Batteries stored for emergencies! When the power went off, all I could think about was the fact that I was missing the NASCAR Race on TV, that is until the tornado hit a couple of seconds later. After all the damage was done and as night time approached, I found that I still had some battery power in a portable TV so I could at least watch the recorded end of the race, but more importantly I could get the news that I needed about what was going on around me. What I discovered was that I had several good quality flashlights, but only two of them had any battery strength left and I had no new replacement batteries. When the power is off on a cloudy night, it gets cave dark, everywhere. Now is when you wished you'd bought extra batteries the last time you were in Wal Mart. It's too late now. Light a candle and watch it burn all night long! I learned that once CNN gets a story about bad weather in a particular place, the whole world learns about it. I had family and friends from all over the country calling me to see if we were alright. Now imagine not answering those calls because your cell phone battery is dead and you can't charge it. What are your family members and friends going to assume if you don't answer or return their calls for several hours or days? The worst if they are anything like mine!  Buy one of those quick chargers/boosters for your cell phone and keep it and a store of fresh batteries around for these times when you really need them the most!

Keep plenty of Water and Dry Food stored for Emergencies! This is a given. There probably won't be an electricity or drinkable water after a natural disaster, so store some for use only during emergencies.

Don't become part of the problem!!! Stay out of affected areas! Let the Officials do their jobs! Don't rush to a devastated area just to look at the damage. Remember, if you don't live in the neighborhood that is affected and you go there, you are looked at as a potential looter, no matter what you intentions are! If everything you own in your home were suddenly scattered all over the area, you'd want people to stay out or away until you had time to collect your valuables. You also cause the problems that we had in our neighborhood with blocked entry streets. The Police, Fire Department, and Rescue personnel couldn't get their equipment to the scene because the streets became instantly clogged with the cars of sightseers and gawkers. People were driving on and walking over electrical lines that were down all the while taking pictures of the damage before any of the hazards could be taken care of. Others were smoking in areas where natural gas could be smelled leaking from ruptured gas lines. How stupid is that? Respect other people's property. You can't just drive across someone's lawn just because you want to get closer to the damaged areas. How would you like it if I came to your neighborhood and drove across your yard tonight? Stay home! If it does not affect you and you are not an official who can provide professional help, Keep OUT! It will be on CNN in just a few hours anyway. Wait to see it there!

Suggestion #1 Police should rush to an area affected by a disaster, assess the outer perimeter of the area, and cordon off all access routes, immediately! This should have been the first thing done in Overlook on Sunday! If a person seeking access does not live in the area or can't prove so with Identification, then refuse access until such time as the situation is under control and any potential hazards are taken care of. I've watched police and fire personnel respond to emergency calls for fires, shots fired, robberies, homicides, and such and the first thing that they do is establish control of the area affected! Why that didn't happen in our situation is a question for our City Leaders to answer, but it is a situation that definitely needs to be addressed.

Suggestion #2 Over the last two days I've had people constantly knocking on my door and ringing my phone asking if they can provide their so-called services to help me remove trees, temporarily cover damage to my roof, do landscaping, fix my fences, re-roof my house, paint damaged areas, clean my yard, take care of my pets, help me relocate if needed, and just about every other thing that can be offered. I even had a guy stop and ask me if he could have the 8 X35 foot sheet of twisted and bent aluminum roof sheet that fell in my yard, to which I informed him that I was going to take it to the scrap yard and sell it myself. I thought it worked like this. If you have damages, you contact your insurance company, file a claim, talk to an adjustor or investigator, then seek a reputable company, preferably a company here in Prattville to come and give you an estimate for the job, then select the estimate that you prefer. I don't think that a roofing company from Opelika should be allowed to go door to door offering to re-roof your house the day after a storm hits. Why can't we keep the vultures at bay! Isn't this illegal? Why don't service companies have to register with a city agency before they are allowed to go door to door or to fill my mailbox with hand written ads for their business offerings. There was a guy with an old beat up truck and a 5 X 10 foot open trailer offering to help people move their stuff to a storage facility out on 82 and 14, only he doesn't' work for the storage company. He charges and he wanted $350.00 per load of household goods to haul only about 5 or 6 miles. Then he gets a cut of the first month's storage fee which I'm sure is higher now than it was last Sunday morning. The City needs to enact policy that prevents opportunist from following storms and coming here looking for their next victim. Now is the time to do it and do it right! We don't need them and they are getting in the way of the process.

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