'Everything came crashing down': Alabama family recounts surviving EF-3 tornado
By
Adriana Navarro, AccuWeather staff writer
Updated Jan 30, 2021 10:43 PM EDT
Storm Chaser Reed Timmer explains his expectations for spring in 2021, along with ABC7's Leslie Lopez’ predictions for California.
It took a few days for the Williams family to get the debris out of their hair after the EF-3 tornado tore through Fultondale, Alabama, Monday night. The storm had rendered some areas unrecognizable after lifting and tearing apart homes, including that of the Williams family.
Moments before the tornado struck, Jason Williams, 45, had been playing his Xbox, most of his family already having gone to bed. Before turning in, he took a moment to check the weather, tuning in for James Spann's coverage of the storm that was blowing through the area. The sound of sirens soon pierced through the night, and his 16-year-old daughter, Anna, came running into the room.
Taking Spann's warning for residents of Fultondale to take cover, Jason shook the rest of his family awake. With the time that they had, Renee Williams, 45, was barely able to grab a pair of shoes as she and her husband rushed their two daughters to the basement, calling for Smokey, their dog. Anna's cat, Dash, was already in the basement.
A family photo of the Williams, consisting of Jason Williams, Renee Williams and their two daughters, Anna and Katheryn. (Anna Williams)
(Anna Williams)
Minutes later, the electricity went out.
The Williams had always thought themselves prepared for possible tornadoes, a storm kit at the ready and a shelter set up in their basement. They all knew the drill when severe weather tracked into the area, though any tornadoes that formed normally tracked more to the north of their home, Jason told AccuWeather. However, there were a few things from the kit they didn't have available, like extra flashlights.
Jason recalled making the decision to search for one when their ears started to pop -- something many people recount experiencing near a tornado due to the pressure change.
It was the sign they needed to run into their storm shelter room, which sat below the house's front steps.
"Just as soon as we reached the room and holed up, everything came crashing down on top of us," Jason said.
Above them, the concrete slab that made up the front porch came crashing down. Jason and his 10-year-old daughter, Katheryn, were caught below the slab. Renee and Anna, were only partially covered by rubble.
From the weight of the slab alone, Jason thought the entire house had fallen on top of them, not knowing at the time that the whole main floor of their home was gone.
"We were standing in that little room with like the storm shelter, and all I remember is that I blacked out," Katheryn recounted. "I was standing and the house was perfect and then all I see was our neighborhood destroyed. That's all I remember from the night."
Most of the Williams recall blacking out, or the collapse knocking them unconscious before waking up on the ground.
"We didn't really know exactly where we were, what had really happened. We ran into the storm shelter. We were standing, and then most of us don't even remember being knocked down to the floor," Renee said.
She estimated it all happened within 30 seconds.
"I don't remember falling," Anna recalled. When she woke up, she was covered in rubble from the waist down.
At first she had thought that the roof had collapsed over them, trapping them in a pocket of rubble. But after standing up and looking around, peering through the dark of the night, she turned to see the area where her neighbor's house should have been.
"I'm realizing that I'm seeing the skyline, and I'm seeing where our house should be," Anna said. "And I'm turning around in circles, just looking and realizing that it was all gone."
On the one hand, she and her family would be able to get out. On the other, "There was just no way that we would ever be able to fix the house."
Katheryn recounted her dad holding onto her so tightly it became difficult to breathe.
"I wasn't going to let you go," Jason told her during the interview.
Katheryn also recalled water pouring in. The main waterline for the house had burst over them, drenching the family.
"I remember saying, 'Gosh, I wish it would stop raining,' but it was not the rain," Jason said, Anna adding it was too dark to tell.
Regardless, the water presented a new problem. All of the family members had their phones, but the water interfered with the touch screens, making it difficult to answer calls coming through or making calls for help getting out of the basement. The family recounted both trying to find help via calls and through prayer.
"I wanna say that without God's hand being on us, we would have never survived," Jason said.
A Hampton Inn hotel is severely damaged after a tornado tore through Fultondale, Ala., on Monday, Jan. 25, 2021. (Alicia Elliott via AP)
Eventually, they caught the sound of a car door closing, and light pierced through the night, the beams of flashlights sweeping across the area. Anna couldn't make out the people holding them, and she reasoned there was the chance they couldn't see her family either.
She picked up her flashlight and turned it on, waving it to signal where they were and yelling to catch their attention -- they were there, they were alive and they had people stuck.
The lights moved closer as help arrived, and Jason found the strength to lift the cement slab, sliding Katheryn out from under it.
The doorframe of the room had partially fallen, propped up against a treadmill. The new aid shined a light on it, guiding the family as they used the doorframe to climb out of the basement.
Mostly shoeless, without jackets and most of them still in their pajamas, the Williams family emerged from their basement with only a few cuts and bruises. They estimated it took about 10 to 15 minutes to pull themselves out from under the rubble.
"We sat in the trunk of my mom's car for a minute, and then I think that's when everything just kind of started to hit us," Anna said.
They had always taken warnings to seek shelter seriously, had always had an emergency kit ready and had always thought themselves prepared, but the reality that this tornado had actually hit their house was something to process.
"In the moment we really thought that we were going to die and that we were not going to make it through that," Renee said.
Authorities later confirmed that at least 30 people were injured in the storm, and at least one person was killed in the tornado, identified on Tuesday as 14-year-old Elliott Hernandez. The teen and his family had been sheltering in their basement when their home collapsed in on them, according to The Associated Press.
The remains of homes in Fultondale, Ala., on Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2021, after they were destroyed by a tornado. (AP Photo/Jay Reeves)
(AP Photo/Jay Reeves)
It wasn't until the next day that the Williams family knew the extent of the damage to their own home. Everything from the upstairs portion of the house was scattered about, spread out enough to appear as more than one destroyed home.
"There's so many different pieces of our house [that] when people come up and they're asking, 'So you lived here. Well, who lived over here?'" Jason said, adding his response was "'That's part of our house.'"
Despite the cement slab falling over them, the Williams said that the room they had taken shelter in was the safest place they could have been and the only one where they could have survived. Even in the basement outside of their storm shelter, the debris looks like someone unleashed a spray of bullets from a shotgun to the sheetrock walls.
As of Friday, the family continues to look for two of their eight pets -- two guinea pigs.
Immediately after the tornado, the Williams had been unable to find Smokey and Dash, having lost track of them when the ceiling fell, not to mention the little light available. Jason called for the two pets, but got no response.
When he returned to the site the following morning, he found Smokey sitting on the couch, the wall of the room leaning over the furniture and having easily hidden him from view the previous night. Over the next few days, they found their tortoise, Ivy, in Katheryn's rug, two of their four guinea pigs -- one of which was found somehow in a closed kitchen cabinet drawer -- and their cat, Dash.
Moving forward, the Williams have decided as a family they won't be rebuilding in Fultondale -- a place Jason and Renee have lived for their entire married life.
"Basically, as my dad said the other day, it's just a new chapter for us," Renee said.
In their new home, they plan on adding bicycle helmets and whistles to their storm kit.
"You take it serious, but then you kind of don't take it seriously sometimes," Renee said, referring to the routine of taking shelter for severe weather that normally misses their home. "When they say get to your safe place, then I suggest people do that because had we waited another couple of minutes, I'm really not sure that we would have even made it out alive."
Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.
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News / Weather News
'Everything came crashing down': Alabama family recounts surviving EF-3 tornado
By Adriana Navarro, AccuWeather staff writer
Updated Jan 30, 2021 10:43 PM EDT
Storm Chaser Reed Timmer explains his expectations for spring in 2021, along with ABC7's Leslie Lopez’ predictions for California.
It took a few days for the Williams family to get the debris out of their hair after the EF-3 tornado tore through Fultondale, Alabama, Monday night. The storm had rendered some areas unrecognizable after lifting and tearing apart homes, including that of the Williams family.
Moments before the tornado struck, Jason Williams, 45, had been playing his Xbox, most of his family already having gone to bed. Before turning in, he took a moment to check the weather, tuning in for James Spann's coverage of the storm that was blowing through the area. The sound of sirens soon pierced through the night, and his 16-year-old daughter, Anna, came running into the room.
Taking Spann's warning for residents of Fultondale to take cover, Jason shook the rest of his family awake. With the time that they had, Renee Williams, 45, was barely able to grab a pair of shoes as she and her husband rushed their two daughters to the basement, calling for Smokey, their dog. Anna's cat, Dash, was already in the basement.
A family photo of the Williams, consisting of Jason Williams, Renee Williams and their two daughters, Anna and Katheryn. (Anna Williams)
Minutes later, the electricity went out.
The Williams had always thought themselves prepared for possible tornadoes, a storm kit at the ready and a shelter set up in their basement. They all knew the drill when severe weather tracked into the area, though any tornadoes that formed normally tracked more to the north of their home, Jason told AccuWeather. However, there were a few things from the kit they didn't have available, like extra flashlights.
Jason recalled making the decision to search for one when their ears started to pop -- something many people recount experiencing near a tornado due to the pressure change.
It was the sign they needed to run into their storm shelter room, which sat below the house's front steps.
"Just as soon as we reached the room and holed up, everything came crashing down on top of us," Jason said.
Above them, the concrete slab that made up the front porch came crashing down. Jason and his 10-year-old daughter, Katheryn, were caught below the slab. Renee and Anna, were only partially covered by rubble.
From the weight of the slab alone, Jason thought the entire house had fallen on top of them, not knowing at the time that the whole main floor of their home was gone.
"We were standing in that little room with like the storm shelter, and all I remember is that I blacked out," Katheryn recounted. "I was standing and the house was perfect and then all I see was our neighborhood destroyed. That's all I remember from the night."
Most of the Williams recall blacking out, or the collapse knocking them unconscious before waking up on the ground.
"We didn't really know exactly where we were, what had really happened. We ran into the storm shelter. We were standing, and then most of us don't even remember being knocked down to the floor," Renee said.
She estimated it all happened within 30 seconds.
"I don't remember falling," Anna recalled. When she woke up, she was covered in rubble from the waist down.
At first she had thought that the roof had collapsed over them, trapping them in a pocket of rubble. But after standing up and looking around, peering through the dark of the night, she turned to see the area where her neighbor's house should have been.
"I'm realizing that I'm seeing the skyline, and I'm seeing where our house should be," Anna said. "And I'm turning around in circles, just looking and realizing that it was all gone."
On the one hand, she and her family would be able to get out. On the other, "There was just no way that we would ever be able to fix the house."
Katheryn recounted her dad holding onto her so tightly it became difficult to breathe.
"I wasn't going to let you go," Jason told her during the interview.
Katheryn also recalled water pouring in. The main waterline for the house had burst over them, drenching the family.
"I remember saying, 'Gosh, I wish it would stop raining,' but it was not the rain," Jason said, Anna adding it was too dark to tell.
Regardless, the water presented a new problem. All of the family members had their phones, but the water interfered with the touch screens, making it difficult to answer calls coming through or making calls for help getting out of the basement. The family recounted both trying to find help via calls and through prayer.
"I wanna say that without God's hand being on us, we would have never survived," Jason said.
A Hampton Inn hotel is severely damaged after a tornado tore through Fultondale, Ala., on Monday, Jan. 25, 2021. (Alicia Elliott via AP)
Eventually, they caught the sound of a car door closing, and light pierced through the night, the beams of flashlights sweeping across the area. Anna couldn't make out the people holding them, and she reasoned there was the chance they couldn't see her family either.
She picked up her flashlight and turned it on, waving it to signal where they were and yelling to catch their attention -- they were there, they were alive and they had people stuck.
The lights moved closer as help arrived, and Jason found the strength to lift the cement slab, sliding Katheryn out from under it.
The doorframe of the room had partially fallen, propped up against a treadmill. The new aid shined a light on it, guiding the family as they used the doorframe to climb out of the basement.
Mostly shoeless, without jackets and most of them still in their pajamas, the Williams family emerged from their basement with only a few cuts and bruises. They estimated it took about 10 to 15 minutes to pull themselves out from under the rubble.
"We sat in the trunk of my mom's car for a minute, and then I think that's when everything just kind of started to hit us," Anna said.
They had always taken warnings to seek shelter seriously, had always had an emergency kit ready and had always thought themselves prepared, but the reality that this tornado had actually hit their house was something to process.
"In the moment we really thought that we were going to die and that we were not going to make it through that," Renee said.
Authorities later confirmed that at least 30 people were injured in the storm, and at least one person was killed in the tornado, identified on Tuesday as 14-year-old Elliott Hernandez. The teen and his family had been sheltering in their basement when their home collapsed in on them, according to The Associated Press.
The remains of homes in Fultondale, Ala., on Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2021, after they were destroyed by a tornado. (AP Photo/Jay Reeves)
It wasn't until the next day that the Williams family knew the extent of the damage to their own home. Everything from the upstairs portion of the house was scattered about, spread out enough to appear as more than one destroyed home.
"There's so many different pieces of our house [that] when people come up and they're asking, 'So you lived here. Well, who lived over here?'" Jason said, adding his response was "'That's part of our house.'"
Despite the cement slab falling over them, the Williams said that the room they had taken shelter in was the safest place they could have been and the only one where they could have survived. Even in the basement outside of their storm shelter, the debris looks like someone unleashed a spray of bullets from a shotgun to the sheetrock walls.
As of Friday, the family continues to look for two of their eight pets -- two guinea pigs.
Immediately after the tornado, the Williams had been unable to find Smokey and Dash, having lost track of them when the ceiling fell, not to mention the little light available. Jason called for the two pets, but got no response.
When he returned to the site the following morning, he found Smokey sitting on the couch, the wall of the room leaning over the furniture and having easily hidden him from view the previous night. Over the next few days, they found their tortoise, Ivy, in Katheryn's rug, two of their four guinea pigs -- one of which was found somehow in a closed kitchen cabinet drawer -- and their cat, Dash.
Related:
Moving forward, the Williams have decided as a family they won't be rebuilding in Fultondale -- a place Jason and Renee have lived for their entire married life.
"Basically, as my dad said the other day, it's just a new chapter for us," Renee said.
In their new home, they plan on adding bicycle helmets and whistles to their storm kit.
"You take it serious, but then you kind of don't take it seriously sometimes," Renee said, referring to the routine of taking shelter for severe weather that normally misses their home. "When they say get to your safe place, then I suggest people do that because had we waited another couple of minutes, I'm really not sure that we would have even made it out alive."
Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.
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