SituationAwareness:

April 21

The storm system that began in Oklahoma on Thursday, April 14, made its way to Alabama by Friday morning. The National Weather Service has so far (April 19) confirmed 15 tornadoes in central Alabama.  Affected counties included Sumter (Geiger, Cuba), Hale (Greensboro, Forkland), Bibb (West Blocton), Greene (Forkland), Shelby (Alabaster, Wilsonville), Perry (Hamburg), Dallas (Paul M. Grist State Park, Marion Junction, Selma), Elmore (Titus, Equality), Coosa (Equality), Tallapoosa (Equality, Jackson’s Gap). The tornadoes in Sumter county created damage paths 10.5 miles x 1 mile (Geiger) and 8.9 miles x 200 yards (Cuba). The Forkland (Hale and Greene counties) tornado left a damage path 24 miles long by 880 yards wide. The Equality (Elmore, Coosa and Tallapoosa) tornado damage path was 22 miles x 800 yards. According to the NWS, no fatalities or injuries were reported for any of these 15 tornadoes.  However, there were seven deaths resulting from the storm system. Six of the seven were in mobile homes, with the seventh person believed to have been in a house.

ImpactUni:

Initial report: No Extension personnel were injured during the storms, nor were county offices damaged.  Revised 4/28: all of the Extension facilities are still intact and some even have power in the northern part of the state. Two ag experiment stations sustained some pretty significant damage. We had one employee who suffered injury, but will fully recover, and four whose homes received damage ranging from slight to the house is demolished. The Alabama A&M University campus (part of the ACES system) will be closed until May 9 due to power outage.

UniResponseEfforts:

The county coordinators in the affected counties have offered local support. On April 27, started updating the Alabama-EDEN page w/good stuff from EDEN. Now we start collecting damage information and helping affected counties figure out about long range recovery teams. The ACES mobile Internet trailer was deployed to Cullman County April 27 and  transported to Marion County May 4. AS of May 4 county agents are distributing materials and working with individuals in their counties.

UseofEDENResourcs:

The coordinators have been provided with links to resource materials from ACES and through EDEN. 

4/28 Update: Used EDEN resources in developing the AL-EDEN page. Also, sought assistance from a handful of EDEN delegates in responding to a specific question from a regional director: "What are the first 10 steps we need to do to begin cleaning up this mess?"  Draft response was pulled from some EDEN resources and refined based on feedback from the handful. That response is going to be used for this week's EDEN blog-post, since so many states were affected.

DisasterInstitution:

Auburn University   [Virignia Morgan]