From ‘Armageddon’ to restoration after April 27, 2011 tornadoes
(contributed)
Alabama Power brings normalcy after devastation
In the minds of most Alabamians, the scenario was as unthinkable as it seemed unlikely: On April 27, 2011, two mammoth, brutal storms unleashed 45 tornadoes across the state within 14 hours. Many residents say they’ll never forget that day of infamy.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011, will be forever listed in the annals of Alabama history as the time that storms of nearly biblical proportions left death and devastation in their wake, killing 247 residents and destroying thousands of homes and businesses. It was the second-most deadly day of tornadoes in U.S. history. One foundation that makes everyday life possible – Alabama Power’s electric transmission and distribution systems – took heavy hits, as well.
In the midst of mayhem, Alabama Power’s men and women – among the many who lost homes – were called on to rebuild and restore the electric system, and return an inkling of normalcy. Many employees were among those who lost friends or loved ones in the aftermath of April 27, trying to pick up the pieces after tremendous losses.
Crew substations devastated: Alabama Power remembers April 27, 2011 from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.
It was the second-most deadly day of tornadoes in U.S. history. Damage to Alabama Power’s electric system and transmission infrastructure was unprecedented.
‘Armageddon’ unleashed across Alabama
Jim Stefkovich (Meteorologist in charge, National Weather Service – Calera Office): In my 34 years, I’ve experienced a number of strong and violent storms. We knew five days in advance this would be a big outbreak. But two days before the event, I had never seen all the severe weather parameters come together like they had. That’s why I called it the “Armageddon” of storms.
When Pam Boyd at Alabama Power reached out to us, I let her know how serious it would be, hoping I was wrong.
On April 27, if you took all the tornadoes that forged a swatch across Alabama, the total length was 1,200 miles. That’s like driving from Birmingham to Boston. Without question, this was the biggest weather event we’d ever seen. There were tornadoes all the way from Mississippi to Alabama to New York state. All the ingredients you need at low-, mid- and upper levels all came in at the right time, with such intensity. We knew there would be violent tornadoes with long storm tracks.
Alabama Power crews and contract crews were on the scene to restore power to every customer who could receive it, as soon as safely possible. (contributed)
Alabama Power remembers April 27, 2011: Community involvement in the wake of disaster from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.
Pam Boyd (2011 Alabama Power Storm Center director, Power Delivery (PD) Distribution general manager – Birmingham Division): It was surreal knowing that it would be worse that afternoon. We really began to think about how to keep employees safe that evening. At 10:27 a.m., I sent an email warning employees about the severity of the storm situation. The Storm Center secured 1,150 resources between our first call that morning to the Southeastern Electric Exchange and the call in the afternoon. I never dreamed the storms that broke at 4 a.m. would continue until 10 p.m. that night.
Kristie Barton (Transmission Maintenance General Manager, Alabama Power): To this day, it gives me chills when I recall those words from Jim Stefkovich. Our employees were out there working, and all of us in the Transmission Storm Center were thinking about how to keep them safe. To his credit, that further heightened our level of concern about the system.
Storms cut through Tuscaloosa and surrounding areas, continuing to Pleasant Grove, Hackleburg, Birmingham, Alex City and into the eastern area of the state.
Barton: Watching our TransMap system that shows the real-time status of Alabama Power’s transmission assets, in a 30-minute time frame, I remember seeing the storm damage start in the western part of the state, with line after line after line going out. It appeared as though we had more lines out than we had in service, going from the Western Division all the way to Eastern Division. It was an eerie sight to see.
Boyd: We evacuated the Storm Center that evening as the large tornado passed north of Birmingham. You just felt so blessed and so thankful after it was over, that all of our employees were safe through that. By midnight, most of the storms had exited the state.
Counting the toll in the aftermath
With Storm Center employees and Transmission and Distribution line crews on the ground to restore power, Alabama Power employees were among those reeling from the storms. Nearly everyone seemed to know someone who faced gut-wrenching realities after the storms.
Bill Heaton (Power System Coordinator – Alabama Control Center, Birmingham): My family and I were in the basement when we rode out the F4 tornado in Pleasant Grove. My eldest daughter and her family were with us. It was one of the scariest things I’ve ever been through. It got really hard to breathe because the tornado was sucking out all the air. The poured concrete floor was shaking. It seemed like it lasted a long time. It sounded like a couple of F-18 jets were in the living room. My wife counted the trees falling, one by one. When the noise stopped, we ran outside. I was surprised we didn’t see the sky through the roof.
It struck me how green everything looked and I realized it was because all the trees were on the ground. Shingles were off the roof, and the yard was full of debris, a lot from Tuscaloosa. Our house is about one-eighth of a mile from the top of a hill in my neighborhood. My son-in-law and I reached the top, looking down to the valley below. All the trees and houses were just gone. We started running toward my son-in-law’s parents’ house. Their home was missing one entire end, but no one was hurt. The porch of a nearby house had fallen in.
I heard screams and ran to the house. Two children were trapped underneath. The father helped me and several others jack up the concrete of the front porch, and we got the children out. A wall rested on a child’s pumpkin seat. We took the seat out and found a two-month old boy – not a scratch. Then we helped remove a young woman, the baby’s mother, from under the porch.
Company crews work in Pleasant Grove. (contributed)
We realized pretty quickly she was severely injured, and began CPR. You do the right thing because you practice it. I, an Army vet and a nurse did CPR for an hour. We couldn’t get an open airway. I’d ingested vomit. It finally got to the point the three of us couldn’t do it anymore.
We were totally exhausted. There was no chance first responders could get there because of all the trees down. We finally stopped performing CPR. I found a large sleeping bag, and covered her body. Her husband was beside himself. All of a sudden, he realized he didn’t know where the baby was. A neighbor had picked up the baby while we did CPR. I had to tell him we’d done all we could do, and we couldn’t do any more.
The victim, nurse Carrie Greer Lowe, passed away. Heaton learned later that Lowe’s neck was broken and they couldn’t have saved her. Despite it all, Heaton said he would do it again.
Heaton: You do what’s right for those around you. Safety and taking care of other people isn’t just something on a billboard. It’s the fabric of who Alabama Power employees are. As a corporate citizen, Alabama Power stands head and shoulders above anybody.
More than 600 of 900 buildings in Pleasant Grove were destroyed. Heaton felt fortunate his home was intact, though most trees were gone. The Heatons decided to stay. For only the third time in company history, Alabama Power activated its Employee Services department to assist storm-stricken employees.
Heaton’s family at home on Easter Sunday, three days before an E4 tornado hit Pleasant Grove. (contributed)
Heaton: It was like a war zone. All the cell towers in the area had been destroyed. They were getting bodies out for three full days. All the landmarks were gone.
Kristie Cochran, executive assistant in the Transmission Department, told us the company had someone coming out to place a tarp over our roof. It was two to three days before the insurance company could come out. I asked for a day or two off to help my community. When our manager Ron Parsons heard about it, he said, ‘Bill is assigned to First Baptist Church for the next two weeks.’ I handed out bottled water and other items to people in my community, doing whatever was needed.
Only one 115-kilovolt power line remained intact in Tuscaloosa, preventing the city from being without power. Danny Kelley will never forget the devastation in Tuscaloosa. His substation crew was working north of the city when they were called to return to headquarters because of threatening weather.
Danny Kelley (Western Division Substations Crew Leader): I was hoping to the good Lord none of us would get hurt. We could see the tornado. You could see trees and limbs and poles inside the tornado. We were about 2 miles from it when it hit. We couldn’t tell if it was on the ground. As soon as it went through, we started to get to Castle Hill transmission substation. It took nearly 3 hours to arrive. People were looking at the debris. We were trying to ground the substation. It was the worst storm I’ve been associated with, and I’ve been at Alabama Power 43 years. I’m glad no one was in the area at Castle Hill when it came through.
Transmission substations at Alberta City, Crescent Ridge Road, Kaul and Rosedale were totally destroyed. We installed mobile substations at Kaul, Peterson and Hackleburg. It took three weeks to reload Alberta City.
I’ve never seen poles destroyed that way, like they were busted to pieces, especially at Alberta City. It’s a miracle it didn’t kill a lot more people. My son, Jeremy, was a nurse practitioner at DCH Regional Medical Center in Tuscaloosa, and he worked in the temporary morgue they set up. I don’t care to see this again. It was hard to swallow.
Boyd: Our employees were among first responders going out after the storm. It was tragedy like we’d never seen before. A day after the storms, you could see the markings on the homes as first responders marked them based on what they found inside. While it was a rewarding feeling for our employees to restore service in these areas it was very difficult to see as you were working. The line personnel at Alabama Power are the best in the country and responded with dedication and professionalism that is unsurpassed.
Barton: The coordination with our Supply Chain folks, crews and Southern Company Services Design folks to get equipment in and perform the restoration was just amazing.
Jackie Cleckler (Substation Construction Foreman – PD Field Forces, Corporate Headquarters): My wife and I were watching TV at dinner, and the news was on, and they flashed the tornado coming through Tuscaloosa. Working here all those years, all I could think was ‘oh my God, surely not.’ The next day my boss called me and said, ‘You’re familiar with Tuscaloosa. Head that way.’ When I drove into Alberta City, words are hard to explain how I felt. The damage was something – I’d never seen anything like that.
Tuscaloosa residents in the storms’ aftermath. (contributed)
When we went in (to work), it was kind of like a football game. They had everything diagrammed out, just like a play – what person would do this or that. It was like a team. We had our coaches, everything lined up, all of our players doing what they were supposed to do. The main priority was getting power back on and helping people.
Jackie Kemp (Transmission Lines Foreman – Jasper Crew Headquarters): I kept hearing alerts on my SouthernLINC. I knew there were outages.
We knew every line was going out. It was just in sequence. When the first wave went through, we weren’t at work. When we came in, we were dispatched to fix the lines. When I knew the storm was coming in, the eight of us went to crew headquarters to take shelter. While we were standing outside, shingles and lawn chairs were falling from the sky. Watching the news forecast, that’s when we figured out the debris was from Cordova.
We returned to work when there was no immediate threat. You had to pick a spot and decide this is where we’re going to start. As more crews came in, we told them where to go to work. We got a contractor to work on the 46-kV line in Pleasantfield District Substation. The 161-kV line ran all the way into Mississippi from Plant Gorgas, so it would give the opportunity to get some lights on if we could get the substation hot.
Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox remembers April 27, 2011, looks toward continued restoration from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.
Restoring power, restoring lives
Following the storms, Alabama Power had more transmission lines out than ever seen before – even after Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina. To restore power to the most customers as quickly as possible, the company diverted power around storm-stricken areas, when able. Crews installed hundreds of sectionalizing devices, allowing electric load to be moved from one substation to another and not interrupt service to unaffected customers. Because it takes weeks to rebuild a substation, crews set up mobile substations until permanent rebuilds could be completed. Calm weather in the days following allowed the company to bring in power from other states to meet demand.
The company’s Western Division, headquartered in Tuscaloosa, took some of the hardest hits from EF4 and EF5 tornadoes, which stayed on the ground an extraordinary 180 miles. Western Division set up four staging areas to funnel work crews, who toiled from 6 a.m. until dark each day to restore power. The company’s Birmingham and Eastern divisions were also hit hard by EF4 and EF5 tornadoes, while Southern Division, in the south-central section of the state, sustained some severe damage from isolated, violent tornadoes. After the second wave of evening tornadoes flattened homes, about 950 personnel worked in tremendously damaged areas of Blount County, as well as Pell City, Gadsden and Shoal Creek Valley in Eastern Division.
Scott Moore (Alabama Power Transmission Lines vice president): One key element of these storms was that where tornadoes were on the ground, there was utter devastation. They wiped the ground clean, like a vacuum cleaner.
Shirley Jackson (left) helped her mother following Pratt City’s tornado. (contributed)
Selina Lee (Eastern Division Distribution manager): In most storm situations, broken poles mark the former locations of power lines. But the tornadoes wiped out much of the infrastructure. Engineers were forced to use digitized GPS maps to find where lines once existed, staking and building them from scratch.
Boyd: I looked at a storm track map from the National Weather Service, and the whole northern part of the state was solid tornadoes. We replaced enough wire in the restoration process to go from Birmingham to Washington, D.C. We decided where to place staging areas for crews, which were more than ever before. We had prepared for six staging areas but effectively opened 12 staging areas throughout the northern part of our territory. This was an incredible effort by all organizations within the company including Corporate Services, Fleet, Security, IT, and many other employees who assisted.
Kelley: We’d work 16-hour days, go home and sleep a little bit, then come back. It was one of the best storm restorations I’ve ever seen. It worked to perfection. I’m glad to be a part of Alabama Power.
Cleckler: When we first got into Tuscaloosa from Birmingham and saw all the devastation, I thought, “How in the world? We’ll never get all this stuff back together.’ But I think seeing everybody bond. I can’t praise the leadership enough on what they did. They were in there making sure we had all the equipment, the materials we needed to get everything done. I doubted it at first, but what I’ve learned is, when you get a strong team together like we’ve got, anything is possible.
Kemp: My crew really wanted to pull more hours, but the company didn’t think it was safe. These guys take the job seriously. A storm like that takes a toll on our people too. Somebody was working all the time.
Barton: In the Transmission Storm Center, all of us were working 18- to 20-hour days for the first three days after the storms hit. It became apparent, after three days into it, that we couldn’t sustain that kind of schedule, and we started establishing shifts. From a Transmission perspective, there was a lot of cleanup work to the company’s right of ways and to our substation sites because of the debris, trees, cars – anything you can think of – as well as the transmission structures being down. It took months to remove and clean up the debris. We worked with local contractors, our Environmental Affairs Department and a lot of different entities to ensure debris was disposed of properly.
Barton: In seven days, transmission crews replaced over 400 transmission structures, and repaired or replaced eight damaged or destroyed substations. The amount of damage to the transmission system was one that the electric industry had never experienced before.
Moore: Our employees’ efforts simply prove why we are the best in the nation at storm restoration. It is because of the people that do this work daily, who show their commitment to our customers and our communities in times when they are needed most – that is following natural disasters, which call for levels of response that are truly extraordinary.
Boyd: Power is the last sense of normalcy. It is the glimmer of hope that things can go back to how they were. We are at our very best in those type situations. We’re at heightened awareness. Employees were working on adrenaline and the sense of pride for their neighbors, friends, communities and customers. It’s the way we give back.
It’s unheard of to restore power in that period of time. The most important thing is to remain flexible. You’ve got to be able to adjust and adapt, and do things quickly. It’s extremely important to push the decision-making from the top down, having a decentralized approach.
At the end, it was a very rewarding experience to repair that much infrastructure in that period of time. We had a lot of help, and our sister companies and mutual assistance partners were here for us.
