The Montgomery Advertiser from Montgomery, Alabama • 10

Montgomery Advertisec 10A Thursday, March 7, 1996 Terrible dawn Robbie Elliot holds an umbrella as she walks through her home in Bridlebrook Farms. Her home was destroyed by the early Wednesday morning ZZ- V--V' 4. rr- -'-rr- ---V If? utes, Sgt. Evans said. The commissary opened for regular business Wednesday, he said.

Downtown, firefighters helped, remove brick loosened from the fourth-floor roof of the vacant Brown Furniture building on Commerce Street when lighting hit the building overnight. Damage to the-j northwest corner of the building, left authorities afraid the bricks would fall to the sidewalk below, endangering pedestrians, said Dis- i trict Chief C.E. Walker. In Normandale, the storms shattered trees and utility poles across:" the neighborhood, leaving the re- mains scattered across streets and houses. n.

Alabama Department of Public': Health offices, a bank and supermarket at Normandale Mall had windows and-' parts of walls blown out early'' Wednesday. The Health Depart-, ment shut down operations at offices Wednesday, i and today. Like Patton McGinley, Normandale residents had one'' word to describe the storm quick. "I woke up. It sounded like they always say, like a freight Mr.

McGinley said. "Part of mandale Mall's roof is in my back yard I wonder if they're going to come get their roof back." Two pine trees in his back yard were shorn off about 15 feet from the ground. In his driveway, a white, 1969 Cutlass convertible sat without a scratch. "It had a cover on it," he explained. "It's down the street." TWISTERS from page 1A was expected to strike the warm air lingering over the area, raising the possibility of more violent thunderstorms.

The tornado that hit the Ryan Road area was the strongest of the four to six the National Weather Service believes touched down in Montgomery, said Brian Peters, a weather service meteorologist in Birmingham. The storm possibly packed winds of up to 110 mph and left a three-mile trail, he said. "Total destruction here," Gov. James said Wednesday evening after surveying the damage at Country Estates. "Twelve to 14 mobile homes destroyed, two fatalities utter destruction." The destruction in Country Estates was as random as it was sudden.

Teresa Harris said she was asleep when the mobile home next to her lifted in the wind and slammed into her bedroom wall. The pressure of the wind blew out her windows and, she says, sucked her and her 3-year-old through the bedroom window. Outside she found her neighbor's mobile home overturned. Across the yard, another mobile home had flipped and wrapped around a tree. Three mobile homes down, her cousin's mobile too was surrounded with destruction, but relatively undamaged.

"I don't know how I'm alive," she said. The Alabama National Guard and state troopers are prepared to MICKEY WELSHSTAFF assist local authorities. "We've put everybody on standby tonight, as we have another front expected to arrive after 11 p.m.," Gov. James said. Armories will be ready for anyone seeking shelter, and the Alabama Emergency Management Agency will begin assessing dam- Lightning scored a direct hit on the post commissary at Maxwell Air Force Base, Gunter Annex, causing a small fire and relatively minor damage, a military spokesman said.

"We literally had no damage other than that," said Master Sgt. J. Jay Evans, a spokesman in the 42nd Air Base Wing public affairs office. Firefighters were called to the scene about 6:48 a.m. and extinguished the fire in about 10 min Staff Writers Ben Spiess, Frank" Mastin Jr.

and Jamie Kritzer con-, tributed to this report age in Montgomery, Dallas and Macon counties to prepare for a request for federal disaster aid, he said. Sheriffs deputies closed down the mobile home park and were set to patrol the area overnight to prevent looting, Montgomery County Sheriff Dan Jones said. The same applied for Bridlebrook Farms, a subdivision east of Montgomery on Vaughn Road. At 2 p.m. Wednesday, Robbie Elliot sat next to her pickup outside her Bridlebrook Farms home.

Her house was destroyed in the strangest, most violent storms she has ever seen. Her husband's bass boat tore the house's roof off, she said, when the tornado lifted the boat from the driveway, over and through the roof and deposited the craft on the back lawn. There is a metal jungle gym outside her window she has never seen before. The storm dropped a towel in her bedroom that she has never seen before. The walls are sagging and the roof is gone but her grandmother's clock ticked unscathed through the destruction over the fireplace.

"When I was lying in the bathroom, I asked the Lord for mercy," she said. "Now we're going to bulldoze it and start over," Mrs. Elliot said. The tornadoes and microbursts struck the Montgomery area shortly after 5 a.m., with the city's emergency sirens jolting many residents out of bed. In Normandale, on the city's south side, the storms demolished the 800-foot transmission tower of the city's first television station, WCOV.

The Fox affiliate was making arrangements to send out its signal directly to cable television Wednesday afternoon a process complicated by damaged cable lines in the area, said WCOV President David Woods. "This may be the most expensive morning we've had," Mr. Woods said. "The tornado went through and just twisted it like a straw." CBS affiliate WAKA also lost power to its East Boulevard studios when the storm hit, but returned to broadcasting with emergency generators by mid-morning. The city and the American Red Cross of Central Alabama established a special shelter at Chis-holm Community Center to help homeless victims of the storm.

The shelter is at 545 Vandiver Blvd. and has 30 cots set up for those without another place to sleep, said Liz Paravicini, emergency services director for the Red Cross. City crews were at work cleaning up debris as the sky began to clear Wednesday morning. Classes at Montgomery's Police Academy were shut down to permit cadets to help relieve officers guarding sites such as downed power lines. "Cleanup is moving at a very striking rate," Mayor Emory Fol-mar said.

Size limits on what Maintenance Department crews will pick up at curbside have been suspended, the mayor said. "If they can get it to the curb, we'll pick it up," he said. A'Home Sweet Home' wreath lies on the sidewalk outside a home in the Bridlebrook Farms i r- 1 fig X-VV PATRICIA MIKLIKSTAFP- The twisted remains of the WCOV-TV transmission tower lie on the ground outside the television station's Montgomery studio north of Patton Avenue. The nearly 800-foot V-tower was toppled by high winds in the early morning storm. MICKEY WELSHSTAFF if ,7 Kenny Hicks, left, and Bucky Barrett salvage -a television from a mobile home blown over in the Sparks Trailer Park in Selma on Wednesday morning.

octave higher than a freight train. We're awfully lucky to have survived." Selma and Dallas County officials, along with the Marengo County Rescue Squad, worked in darkness through the early morning hours as they tried to find those who were injured in the destroyed and damaged houses. About a dozen mobile homes were destroyed in the Sparks mobile home park off Alabama 14 just outside the Selma city limits. The Rev. Jerry Henry, pastor of Elkdale Baptist Church, was one of the first to arrive at Lazy Acres to console those who had just lost everything.

He spent time with Mrs. Grant as she surveyed the destruction. "People go into an emergency mode when something like this happens," said the Rev. Dr. Henry, a former Army officer who saw combat in Vietnam.

"Then the emotions begin to pour out. It's a lot like combat." The Red Cross, Salvation Army and other agencies rushed to help those in distress. The Army National Guard joined Selma's two hospitals to open up what space they have as DALLAS from page 1A Medical Center and Four Rivers Medical Center said they treated 37 people Wednesday morning as a result of storm-related injuries. Four Rivers spokeswoman Marienne Thomas said 18 were treated for injuries with one transferred to another hospital for treatment and two admitted into the Four Rivers intensive care unit. She said one victim suffered a collapsed lung.

Vaughan spokeswoman Pam Frasier said 19 were treated for injuries with most discharged soon after they arrived. She said Ms. Purdie was pronounced dead at the hospital after she was brought there from the Marion Junction area of west Dallas County. "She was a delightful child who always was very happy and sweet," Selma High School guidance counselor Carolyn Dunaway said of Ms. Purdie.

"She was looking forward to college." Five other occupants of the Barlows' mobile home miraculously survived when the tornado lifted it off its foundation and blew most of it toward or over the pond. Mrs. Barlow's body was found near the edge of the pond, while her husband's body was found several hours later by rescue crews working in the rubble. Relatives of the survivors, some of whom were injured, said Mr. Barlow had just returned to the mobile home from his late night job in Marion and put his keys on a counter when the tornado hit.

"I was told it was like the bottom of the trailer fell out, and they dropped to the ground while the rest of it was blown over toward the pond," said the relative. "They're lucky to be alive." A heavy freezer unit was blown several hundred yards from the mobile home and landed on the other side of the pond. A mile away at the Lazy Acres subdivision, Larry Grant pushed his wife, Christie, and 4-year-old son, Joshua, into their bathtub just as the tornado hit their little home. "Larry laid on top of us," said Mrs. Grant, who described the sound of the tornado as "an t-'t Mr MARK MILLERSTAFF 1 -j I 1 Search and Rescue workers, and medics were on the scene at 5:40 a.m., Mr.

Pettit said. After a haphazard search, rescuers accounted for every resident in the mobile home park by about 1 p.m.. There was some confusion on the scene, Sheriff Jones said. "We got a lot of misinformation," he said. With persons being rushed to the hospital, the destruction and the large number of people on the scene, Sheriff Jones said his department had a hard time determining who was missing and who was not.

Sheriffs deputies and rescuers called off the search for the two Severs brothers shortly after 8 a.m. Rescue dogs failed to turn up any scent of trapped people, Sheriff Jones said. Neighbors and medics also told the sheriffs department that the men were at the hospital, Sheriff Jones said. "Based on that, we felt secure making that decision," Sheriff Jones said. About 10 a.m., new information came in that the two were still missing.

Rescuers and deputies used a bulldozer and renewed their search of two destroyed trailers in the northeast corner of the park. About 20 minutes later, rescuers found the bodies of the Severs brothers under a pile of debris about 40 feet from where their trailer sat originally. 4 i Sheriff Jones said he doubted that ing the two men earlier would have made a difference. The Severses' mobile home and the mo--bile home where Mr. Burgens lived next door were obliterated by the wind.

Shortly after discovering the two bod- ies, rescuers began searching for an eld- erly woman they feared was trapped in her mobile home nearby. i With a bulldozer, rescuers pulled the mobile home upright and searched th I wreckage. As they dug to the bottom of the wreckage, the sheriffs department confirmed the woman was at the hospi- tal. Nearby, mobile homes sat virtually un- scathed. "We're alive by the grace of God," said Francis Jackson, who, along with four children, ages 5, 10, 15 and 18, es- caped the tornado unscathed.

The tornado destroyed Etta Faye Tay- lor's son's house in Bridlebrook Farms; a short distance away. The roof of the brick structure is gone. Every wall is sagging. Every window is broken. Wires and conduits hang like en- trails from the walls.

In the hot sunshine, Mrs. Taylor sal- vaged valuables and meditated on her son's family's escape. "It was a miracle," she said. "Nothing else explains it." i I LOSSES from page 1A Vaughn Road, uprooting trees. The storm traveled northeast across Vaughn Road, ripping through the mobile home park and into the Bridlebrook Farms neighborhood.

From the air, the storm appears to have died after peeling back the roof of Georgia Washington Junior High School in Pike Road. Of the approximately 55 people who live in the 32 mobile homes in Country Estates, two were killed and 17 were injured, said Montgomery County Sheriff Dan Jones. About half of the mobile homes were destroyed thrown upside down, twisted sideways, wrapped around trees, with their contents littered across the 8-acre lot just off Ryan Road east of the Montgomery city limits. Sheriff Jones said no injuries were reported at Bridlebrook Farms, but damage was heavy. About 40 homes were damaged, including two that were destroyed.

Montgomery County Search and Rescue Commander Mike Pettit said the tornado hit the mobile home park about 5:20 a.m. Wednesday. Sheriffs deputies. Montgomery County 4 MARK MILLERSTAFF Montgomery County sheriff's deputies and rescue squad workers carry out one of two bodies recovered from a demolished mobile home Wednesday at the Country Estates mobile home park. The line of storms that moved across the state Wednesday morning killed a total of six people.

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