"Like many seasoned Alabama residents who have over the
years become accustom to the spring storms, I dismissed
the continuous wail of the tornado sirens while working at my desk
at VT Group that day because I was too busy to keep going to the
center room for safety, despite urging by
coworkers. That following morning I was to see first-hand the
folly of my attitude.
The sight of Anderson Hills and parts of Harvest, less than
three miles from home and perhaps 10 miles or so from work, was
sobering--the destruction so personal and so violent. I
was rendered speechless in mid-conversation while
talking on my cell phone as I came over the rise and went from
peaceful untouched pasture to surreal violence. There were
just no adequate words in the shock of the moment.
Later, I could talk about a smashed car lying on top of a
house, wedged in the crumbling remains of a shower stall in what
was the second floor. Baby clothes caught in the tangled
remains of savaged trees impossibly twisted and bent. Homes
vanished, only a slab of wet foundation marking where they had
been. Makeshift crosses pounded into the
mud.
How can you articulate clearly what you are seeing?
Peoples' entire lives, rich and poor alike, little more
than scattered debris?" - A VT Group employee in
Huntsville, Ala.
The old adage that "April comes in like a lion and out like a
lamb" failed to hold true when, on April 28, a record number
of deadly tornados smashed through the South. The storms were
massive and unrelenting, and in two cases produced F5 category
twisters with winds more than 250 miles per hour. The alarms
blared for nearly twelve hours and stunned residence saw killer
twisters form and crash down along the same corridor over and
over. When it was all over, the swath of destruction was
several miles wide and 132 miles long, killing more than 300
people, and left nearly all of north Alabama without power for over
a week.
VT Group has two offices in Huntsville and Madison. While
the company suffered no loss of life amongst the employees
themselves, some employees lost family members and suffered
property damage.
Patricia Azlin, human resources operations manager,
and her team immediately took on the challenging tasks of
communication in an environment of no power and limited
communication. She and her team worked to establish contact
with employees to check on their safety and get information out
about work status and conditions at the office. For nearly a
week, living conditions in the entire area were quite
primitive.
When the power came back on, immediately thoughts turned to
helping those who suffered from the storms. In addition to
the numerous instances of personal support from friends and
neighbors and individual helping hands offered by VT Group
employees, a small team organized by Kari Houser volunteered for
the United Way the weekend of May 14, helping an elderly couple
pack their few belongings in a storage unit after their house was
destroyed. Employees also helped a young couple clear a dozen
damaged trees from their property and cleared a home site that had
little more than a foundation remaining.