Alabama tornado destroys home of employee's parents

  • Published
  • By Shawn Jacobs
  • AEDC/PA
ARNOLD AIR FORCE BASE, Tenn. --  A number of Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) employees have some sort of connection to the April 27 tornadoes and storms that roared through the Southeast.

Many workers either sustained damage, know someone who did or volunteered in the cleanup efforts. Such is the case with Stephen Arnold, a hydrogeologist with Aerospace Testing Alliance (ATA) Restoration, whose parents' home on the outskirts of Athens, Ala., about 20 miles west/northwest of Huntsville, was destroyed by a powerful tornado.

Arnold said his parents, Billy and Cynthia Arnold, were visiting his grandmother in a Huntsville hospital, so no one was home when the storm hit. He said they were aware of the storms, but they did not know their house was affected until they returned.

"When they came back, that's when they saw the neighborhood pretty much totaled, and their house was totaled," Arnold said. "Nobody in the neighborhood died or was injured, thank goodness.

"The nearest fatality, we think, was [about] four miles away in East Limestone County. Of course, there were deaths all over. This was a tornado that looked like it started down in Hamilton, Ala., and ended near Hazel Green. It was about a 100 mile long path of destruction and about a mile wide swath of destruction, so they were right in the heart of it."

Oddly enough, the room Arnold's parents thought was the safest place in the house was also destroyed.

"It was the interior most half bathroom, up against the interior hallway," Arnold said. "That ended up being a horrible place to be."

Arnold, of Manchester, said he and his two brothers, Darryl, of Huntsville, and Randy, who lives in Birmingham, and a couple of other relatives spent two days helping his parents remove undamaged belongings and keepsakes from the wreckage.

"It crushed the furniture, but inside the furniture we actually were able to recover a lot of keepsakes and fragile stuff," Arnold said. "Amazingly, we did recover most of the keepsakes. Even the scrapbooks - my mom had always kept those in plastic covers and everything - so they didn't get the rain damage.

"We had a lot of people coming and helping the neighborhood. They had to go through security checks, but we always had plenty of drinks and food to eat and we even had bulldozer operators who came in and helped for free."

Arnold's father plans to remove everything from the site of the destroyed house.

"What they'll do is just bulldoze the whole site," Arnold said. "There will be no sign that home was ever there. They'll remove the driveway - everything, foundation - and probably will not rebuild there."

Arnold said his folks will probably look at their options before rebuilding. Since they are older they may choose to downsize, but that has not been decided yet.

He said his parents have some friends who own a house in Athens that was not
damaged and also a house in Florida.

"They are down in Florida, so their home in Athens has been available [for the
Arnolds to live in] until they find a more permanent place to live," Arnold said.

"One good thing is they have some friends who have a home in Florida and they are down in Florida, so their home in Athens has been available [for the Arnolds to live in] until they find a more permanent place to live."

Arnold said his grandmother's health is also improving. She had fallen out of bed two days prior to the storm and fractured her neck, but she is now in rehabilitation and expected to fully recover.

Ironically, what seemed like bad luck for her at the time, may have ended up saving all three people from injury or even death.