How The ABC 33/40 Weather Team Was Impacted By 4.27.11

we never in our wildest dreams imagined that we would be able to watch the most heartbreaking day in the state unfold on that Skycam Network the ultimate goal is to keep people safe and prevent loss of life that's the core of who I am and what we've done here all 15 16 years and I knew what my plan was for the day as far as the way it actually turned out not what I expected knowing the kind of environment that we were in I came on in several hours early had my breakfast and I had a director on standby 3:00 a.m. and called him about 10:00 after 3:00 and I said we're going to go on in about ten minutes I believe The Weather Service is going to issue a tornado warning good morning I'm Jason Simpson live in the ABC 3340 storm alert Center the National Weather Service has issued a tornado warning for Pickens County and Lamar County until 4:15 this morning but the first thought was we're just going to have your standard squall line with some embedded tornadoes and there'll be relatively small relatively short-lived these warnings will be up maybe till about 6 o'clock this morning and then we'll start to ease out of it into a little more stable situation until the afternoon by the time I got down here Jason was already on the air what we ended up with was warning after warning after warning for goodness for hours it didn't stop the most surprising thing about it was the violence with which those tornadoes hit especially in West Alabama early on we do have tornado warnings in effect for Coleman County for Walker County for parts of Jefferson and Shelby counties about 6:30 that morning I got a phone call from one of my cousins in Holly pond who knew I was on the air knew I couldn't take a phone call and I was I thought why in the world you calling me you know that I can't take this call and then it hit me that this giant rotating calm ahead feature on that line of storms that just passed over Holly pond and that he must have something to say so I called him back and he told me that the the house that he was in was okay but the house he was in was okay but the the farm at my aunt's house had been destroyed the barn was on the ground and all the trees were down I knew Jason was struggling with the fact that he had a lot of folks in the path of that morning storm in Jason got all emotional on the air and I don't blame him if he didn't I'd worry about it we're humans it was hours before I knew that my family was okay and that's what makes it hard to talk about it's not that the damage was so bad in Holly pond it's that you know Here I am trying to hold it together Pelham new tornado on TV with with James and and with with hundreds of thousands of people wanting to know where these storms are going next and in the back of my mind the wheels are turning wings and and you just don't know I remember getting off the air and I looked at Jason and he looked at me and it's like we didn't know what to say it was like somebody had rammed their fist in our gut without us being ready soon after that we learned that five people had died and a quarter-million people had no power in that is an issue for this part of Alabama it was greater than the inland effects of hurricanes Ivan and Katrina I was sent to meet up with a photographer in Pell City to see what had already happened over there and get that story after the midday show they called me to the newsroom and we had an impromptu meeting at the assignment desk and I just remember looking at Gary our news director and saying Gary have I ever told you that I expected a violent tornado outbreak with mass casualties before and he says no I said well today's that day today's the day this is a tornado emergency for the City of Hamilton clearly everybody in hackleburg and Bear Creek in a safe place now we have one possible tornado approaching downtown Haleyville tornado emergency for the cities of Tuscaloosa in Northport and this is a tornado emergency for the city of Birmingham and a violent tornado is very close to brint this thing more than likely is on 231 about six miles south of downtown Asheville we had multiple long track violent tornadoes that could kill people my greatest struggle was how to handle that it's like you don't even want to get off a1 for more than 30 seconds but we had to there's a point in life where you where you know that everybody is your brother everybody is your sister and this was that day I'm not so sure that it was really sinking in for a lot of people exactly how strong those storms were that day that is a large wedge tornado that is coming through downtown Coleman and again do not worry about the change in the structure this thing will probably stay down for a long period of time so again we are calling a tornado emergency for the city of Coleman and points north and east we're looking to the southwest from high atop the Tuscaloosa County Courthouse and again we're going to stay with this as long as we keep power if you watched us earlier this afternoon we had a tornado just like that that came through Coleman I would suggest this might even be larger than the Coleman 20 I think it's much larger than that one this thing looks like it might be over 1/2 mile wide maybe up to 3/4 of a mile wide there's a large wedge tornado and the western suburbs of Birmingham and again this is weak coming right up into the downtown area I think it is very clear to me and to Jason that the greatest danger will be along and north of Red Mountain so for those of you downtown Birmingham and points north that's the extreme danger it was just unimaginable the the pain that I was able to feel like James felt the same way we just felt pain for the people who were being affected by this because we were seeing it live and the only thing we could do is warn people and we have learned that if you can show people a live video stream of a tornado they'll do there were a lot of times you show them radar they don't do anything it's very difficult to see and experience what we went through that day and just to know what so many people have gone through and continue to go through [Music] [Music] you and all these emotions started to set in as the death toll could go up every day that the death toll kept going up and a lot of emotions going through my mind all of anger I was angry at me as angry at God angry at the system as we failed the people of the state because the death toll was at high I panicked a few times that day on the 27th even broke down a few times in the van but then again you'd hear a story about somebody that heard the warning and they did the right thing so we know you got 36 people here that would be dead if we didn't do the right thing so then you felt like okay you know we did some good it really hurts to think back and look at that and wonder what we could have done better but with the limitations of our equipment the limitations of radar as it is now we can see tornadoes with radar we see the thunderstorm that produces them so we can't tell what's happening down in that lowest part of the atmosphere it just makes you wonder what can we do better and there's going to be a lot of good things that come out of this but there going to be a lot of memories that haunt me for a long time you

Channel: ABC 33/40 Weather

Views: 409,972

Keywords: james, spann, abc, 33/40, weather

Id: rvb9K3wN91Y

Length: 8min 47sec (527 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 25 2012