SIMCOE — The day after an EF-1 tornado blew through their community, Larry and Geneva Dollar were out on their family’s property, assessing the damage. Digging through the remains of his workshop outbuilding behind his daughter’s house, Larry found one of his boats destroyed. But the local angler said it was still too soon to tell if his second boat would be salvageable.

“Hopefully the insurance will cover some of it, but who knows? You think you’re good and then…” said Geneva, who explained the twister came through just as a tornado warning was expiring.

“We didn’t even have high wind at our house. We had the all clear,” she said. “We’ve been together for over 50 years, and this is the 4th time we’ve been hit.”

The Dollars, along with daughter Robin, rode out Thursday night’s storm in their basement down the road from Robin’s house in the Simcoe/Fairview area. Like many of their neighbors, they emerged to find no one had been hurt — but the same couldn’t be said for their property.

The Huntsville office of the National Weather Service said the storm that tracked a path through eastern Cullman County late Wednesday carried with it an EF-1 tornado, though its preliminary investigation had yet to determine whether more than one twister might have been involved.

Followup information on Friday showed it had traveled a 4.94-mile path between 9:36 p.m. and 9:43 p.m. Wednesday. Winds from the tornado reached a peak intensity of 100 mph. At its widest point, the twister cut a path about 50 yards wide.

‘It just went quiet’

Dollar neighbors Shawn and Kimberly Striker spent their Wednesday watching meteorologists cover the day-long turbulent weather event on television. Things seemed to finally be clearing up as the evening wore on.

“At around 9:30, they were saying the bad weather was over. I got up, started shutting windows, getting ready for bed,” said Shawn.

But the weather app on Kimberly’s smart phone told a different story. “I said, ‘Shawn, I think we’re fixing to get another bad round.’” 

Not long after, the Strikers heard what Shawn and Kimberly described — and the National Weather Service (NWS) later confirmed — was the tornado’s signature freight-train sound.

“That’s the first time [during Wednesday’s storms] that I got scared, and I screamed at her and said ‘that’s a tornado,’” said Shawn. “I’ve never heard that sound before. When people say it sounds like a freight train… it does.”

“He said get down those stairs and I had my oxygen and all these bags with my medicine and insurance papers and clothes. I’d pre-packed everything just in case, but I’d never took it down,” said Kimberly who has been recovering from COVID for several months after an extended hospital stay that included time on a ventilator.

“I got down and got though the door, and the suction came through the house and it slammed that door… it happened so fast and we couldn’t get to each other through that door.

“He was on one side pushing, trying to get to me and I was pulling trying to get it open and we couldn’t get that door to budge, and it was pulling me towards the door and it was like a giant vacuum was stuck to you…and then it just went quiet,” said Kimberly.

Just before the power went out, Shawn said he looked up and was expecting to see the roof “just go.” 

“And then it was over,” said Shawn.

“We finally got the door open and just stood there and we couldn’t hardly breath. It was scary. It was so scary,” said Kimberly.

Everything had been pretty laid back prior to the excitement.

“We’d been laughing before it hit. We were out there watching the first round and he decided to cook supper. And it was a good supper,” laughed Kimberly. “We didn’t even get to clean it up. I said well at least we got to eat a good meal if we get killed later. I mean, I was kidding… and then by golly, that happened!

Washouts & blowouts

The twister came near the end of a full day of severe weather, which brought a more widespread form of destruction with rainfall totals that, in some areas, exceeded 7 inches.

Cullman Emergency Management Agency director Phyllis Little said Thursday that rainfall reports from throughout the county started at 3.5 inches on the low end and went up from there, flooding low-lying areas and, in several places, violently washing out portions of rural county roads altogether.

“We’ve got washouts around culverts and blowouts of culverts from the west side of the county, near the Jones Chapel and West Point areas, all the way over to Fairview,” said Little. “We’ve had bridges underwater in some areas.

The Strikers’ house sustained some damage, but it was slight compared with the shorn roofs, toppled trees, and destruction to chicken houses and other outbuildings in the area. NWS reported a damage zone that began along Alabama Highway 69 between County Roads 1533 and 1534, southwest of Fairview, and extended to County Road 1579. Surveyors also found damage near Gold Ridge community, but said additional information would be needed before a final determination could be made on what caused it.

The greatest damage occurred at County Roads 1568 and 1569 northeast of Fairview, where the tornado sheared the roof off a house, demolished agricultural sheds, tore roofs and siding off chicken houses, and downed several trees — some of which fell on structures and vehicles.

“In terms of residential and structural damage, the most concentrated area is in the Simcoe community; in the general area of County Roads 1568, 1569, and 1579,” said Little. “We’ve got houses with trees on them; houses that’ve had their roofs and rafters just sheared off; chicken houses that’ve been damaged, vehicles with trees collapsed on top of them.

“But the big relief in all of it is that nobody was hurt. We had no reports of injuries or deaths. The rest of the damage, we can fix.”

A law enforcement helicopter with ALEA surveyed the damage from above on Thursday, while NWS representatives arrived at the scene to assess the destruction at ground level. The Red Cross was also on hand, extending the first wave of temporary assistance to residents who’d been either displaced or disrupted by the storm.

Beware scammers

As NWS and local emergency officials review ALEA’s aerial footage and the Red Cross aids residents, representatives from the Alabama Licensing Board for General Contractors are also on site, meeting with residents to advise them on avoiding opportunistic home repair scams.

“They’re encouraging people to prevent being taken advantage of by fly-by-night crews claiming to be roofers; people who take your money up front and leave,” said Little. “All of these people on site — the Red Cross, the National Weather Service; the licensure people — they all have photo ID, and they’re happy to show you who they are. They encourage people to ask, because they’re all trying to ensure that victims of destructive events like this one aren’t being exploited.”

Some county roads where the water has swept away pavement, or damaged culverts to create standing water, have been indefinitely closed. Little said the county road department is still assessing the damage, as well as which roadways will need to remain closed, and that residents in some areas should be mindful of the possibility that school bus routes and through access may require detours for the near future.

State of emergency

A day before the storms, the Cullman County Commission approved Little’s request at its regular meeting to preemptively declare a local state of emergency in order to authorize the use of its early-response road resources quickly, should the storms prove destructive. But with areas countywide affected by extensive flooding damage, as well as the tornado’s more violent destruction near Simcoe, it will likely be several days before officials have an idea of how damaging the March 17 event will prove financially — to both private property owners and county government.

‘Checking on everyone’

For homeowners too, the cleanup is only just beginning. But the Strikers and other residents say they’re grateful to live in a tight-knit community where neighbors help each other.

“It was very overwhelming to have that many people calling and wanting to help,” said Kimberly. ‘Walker’s [Discount Building Supply] was calling, the Superette’s calling. The guy who fixed our roof was here. Simcoe Wood sent a crew to cut trees and get them our of the way. We couldn’t even get out of our driveway.”

Nearby, Mallory Martin was picking up debris on Thursday in her neighbor’s yard along County Road 1635 — less than a mile down the road from the Strikers and Dollars. She and her family had returned from an area shelter on Wednesday night when they had to take cover once again.

As Cullman Electric Cooperative linemen worked to restore power near her home, Martin said she was grateful to live in the community — even when times get tough.

“I love this little neighborhood,” she said. “It’s been awesome watching everyone run around checking on everyone.”