Prichard tornado victims pick up pieces

PRICHARD, Ala. (WALA) - Work continued around the city Thursday, cleaning up after the Christmas tornado. On Prichard’s south side, residents on Chin and Semler streets were trying to put their homes and their lives back together.  Most were just happy to be alive.

“My house was shaking, you know.  It was terrible,” said Chin St. resident Patricia Barren.  “I wouldn’t want no one else to experience what we experienced.”

Barren hit the floor of her home with only seconds notice Tuesday evening.  She rode out the tornado as many of her neighbors did.  It only lasted for seconds, but for those in its path the experience was terrifying.

“Very little time and it scared me to death almost,” said Barren’s next door neighbor Magdalene Windom.  “I’ve never been that scared in my whole life and I hope and pray to God I never have to live through another one.”

Windom and her husband Earl had only a few seconds to take cover in their closet.

“It sounded like an eighteen wheeler coming across…gonna hit you or something,” Windom recalled.  “Just a ‘boom, boom’ and then a ‘whom, whom, boom’ and it’s gone.”

As the Windoms hid in their closet, their neighbor behind them on Semler Street had hit the bedroom floor.  Mary Robinson was at home with her son and watched in fear as her house came apart.

“All I could hear was like a freight train coming straight through the house and I’m laying on my bedroom floor and I’m watching my kitchen wall separate and I could see the storm,” Robinson said.  “It was black, red…it was just so ho

The one sentiment that resonated throughout the community was that it was nothing short of a Christmas miracle that nobody was seriously hurt or killed.

“It was just God,” exclaimed Chin St. resident Irish Houston.  “For us to be walking and living amongst the living…it was just God.”

“You hadn’t heard of no death or no nothin’ from this and anybody that don’t believe there’s a God, they’re crazy.  They got to be crazy,” added Windom.

Power has been restored to all homes in the area that are able to accept power.  Neighbors are still working together to clean up debris, but because there are so many elderly residents, they say any assistance would be appreciated.