Delmar native lives through southeast’s tornado onslaught
Christine Hackman figured the evening of April 27 would be like any other. The University of Alabama student had plans with friends to go out to dinner despite menacing weather and a tornado warning after all, there had been several in the preceding days that were followed by nothing more dramatic than high winds.
But then, as the group of students was about to head out, the sirens started whining. Hackman looked out the window of her Tuscaloosa apartment and saw a massive F4 tornado filling the skyline.
It looked like it was across the street and behind the high school,` she said. `We started hearing people screaming from their balconies.`
The group headed to the first floor for better protection. The power cut out. Debris started smacking against the building.
`It was probably the scariest sound I heard in my entire life,` Hackman said. `I thought I might die. The last text I got out to my parents was ‘I love you.’`
Back in Delmar, N.Y., Hackman’s parents were leaving a Bethlehem Town Board meeting that had gone particularly late. Ann Abaray, Christine’s mother, switched on her cell phone and received a string of messages from her daughter. Luckily, cell reception had returned and Christine was safe.
But for the rest of the night, she and her husband, Peter Hackman, were glued to the television and the cell phone.
`We were just relieved. We were watching the Weather Channel and the weather people there were nearly hysterical,` she said.
And with good reason. Hackman had lived through one of the worst storm systems to ever sweep the southeast. The death toll has since climbed into the hundreds. In Tuscaloosa alone, more than 40 were dead at last count, five of them University of Alabama students. Power was out for over a week in many areas.
Hackman’s apartment escaped damage, but the tornado passed within about six blocks. Student areas and low-income neighborhoods were hit hard. Hackman has two friends who barricaded themselves in their pantry with mattresses, which probably saved their lives. The storm ripped the entire second floor off their home.
For Hackman, a graduate assistant in the school’s recreation department, the few days following the storm were a flurry of activity. The school’s recreation center was designated as an emergency shelter, and so she headed there to help. Over the coming hours, students and residents would straggle in through the door, some injured, many newly homeless. The workers did what they could, providing first aid, new clothing and a place to sleep for the night.
`It was just craziness,` Hackman said. `We were all running on adrenaline for the next two days.`
During all of this she had a chance to survey some of the damage. The tornado had cut a path of destruction through the city that leveled many familiar buildings. The smell of gas leaks was everywhere. Hackman’s new home she was set to move in to in a few weeks was quickly condemned.
`The campus looks the exact same as it did, which is just amazing because a few blocks down it was just awful,` she said.
After working almost nonstop for two days, Hackman took a few hours to use chainsaws to cut up and clear some of the felled trees in the area. As an early birthday present, her parents flew her back to Delmar for a few days of R-and-R before heading back to Tuscaloosa and her graduate assistant job.
Abaray said seeing her daughter was therapeutic, and also that she’s proud she’s heading back to continue helping.
`I was just proud of her. She hung in there. I’d be a basket case if I realized that people were dying and people had been killed or missing,` Abaray said. `She was really able to pull herself together and spend the next couple of days pitching in.`
Finding work shouldn’t be hard. In the aftermath of the storm, as communications have come back up, social media has served as a tool to direct volunteers to the areas that need help the most. In Tuscaloosa, the conversation has switched from how to recover to how to rebuild. Though the disaster has been horrible, there have also been instances of kindness and support.
`It was just neighbors helping neighbors and strangers helping strangers,` Hackman said.
For Hackman, Delmar is her hometown but Tuscaloosa is her home. Helping with the recovery is a foregone conclusion. But the entire area is in shambles, and she asked that people here in New York consider making a donation to the Red Cross and keeping those who are still rebuilding in their thoughts and prayers.
Visit alredcross.org to donate. Tuscaloosa is in the Mid-Alabama region.“
