After the Storm: Part Two

Whenever a natural disaster happens, you will often find me glued to the internet and news. It's not that I love the devastation, in fact that part of it breaks my heart. Since I was a little girl, I have always been awestruck by the processes that shape our Earth and that love has grown into a hobby and passion. I decided to follow my passion and  graduated from college with a degree in Geography with an emphasis in water resources and climatology. While I no longer officially work in the Earth Science field, it is still is my passion. So you can imagine, whenever a historical storm event occurs like it did this past week, I'm all over it before it even happens.

I watched the storms roll in on the radars and streaming video knowing that what I was seeing was catastrophic. The warnings and safety precautions are not always going to save you when storms of this magnitude come rolling in. I expected it would be bad as I watched it live but what I did not expect was this....

Those all fell out of the sky as the storms pounded their way up the Tennessee Valley. I noticed on Facebook that someone had created a page for pictures and documents being found after the tornadoes. I never imagined I would be posting my own finds on that page.

It was late afternoon on Friday when I noticed a piece of trash fall from the sky, most likely having being hung in the trees since Wednesday night. It was a very battered wrapper for Blue Bell Ice Cream Treats. I started wondering if it was possible that I might find other things that had "flown" here via the storms. I began to walk down the street and the first thing I noticed was a children's sunday school worksheet laying in a neighbors yard. And then a few more steps and I found pages ripped from a book (first photo). The page in the photo reads "Don't you know there is a storm going on outside?". Really. I can't make this stuff up! My eyes began to notice other scraps of papers lying around but I could tell John thought I was a little crazy so I refrained from picking up anything else.

The next day, I took Sarah Hazel for a walk and immediately ran across the Thomas & Son furniture tag seen in the first picture. Not too far from that, I found a white square of paper. As I turned it over, my heart sank as I saw the faces of the three women and the baby seen in the second picture above. I stared at it and prayed for each face in the photo. Later that evening, I ran across the typing certification card you see in the third photo.

Because I had the name of the furniture store and the woman's name on the typing certificate, I was able to do some immediate research. The furniture store is located in Rainsville, AL which is over 130 miles from my home. The typing certificate is from Ringgold, GA, around 90 miles away. Both Ringgold and Rainsville were hit hard....very hard.

I have since learned that Thomas and Son furniture is still standing after the storm. Several employees have emailed me to confirm this and to also confirm that the tag is old and likely came out of a home that was destroyed in Rainsville. I hoped that someone from Rainsville, might be able to identify the photograph of the three women and the baby since it was so close to the furniture tag. Realistically though, that photo could be from any of the towns that were hit by that destructive tornadic storm cell that eventually made it's way over my home.

I was able to get in contact with the son of the lady whose name is on the 1975 Ringgold Jr High Typing Certification. She is alive and well. I am very sad to say though, the card appears to have come from her father's house which was destroyed. The father (86 years old) was fatally injured by the storm. This has been confirmed to me by friends of the family.

If you are wondering how I was able to get information from the people of Ringgold and Rainsville so quickly, well let's just say that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are incredible inventions.

I have no idea if I will ever know who those ladies and the baby are in that photograph. I pray that they are all safe. Until the photograph is claimed, it's safely tucked between the pages of my Bible, as close to God as I can get them.

Update May 3rd, 2011- I have received an  email from someone who knows the ladies in the above photograph. She reports that they are all alive, though one of them did lose her home. She is going to get me an address so I can return the photo.