Looking back at December 2000 tornado that hit Tuscaloosa

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — As news alerts spread earlier this month about a deadly series of tornadoes that tore through parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and Missouri, the reports sounded all too familiar to those in Tuscaloosa.

Dec. 16 marked the 21st anniversary of a deadly and destructive tornado that crawled across southern Tuscaloosa County in 2000.

Without the advance warning technology that now allow meteorologists to better predict when and where a tornado might emerge, thousands were caught off-guard, some warned only by the wailing of storm sirens, as what has since been rated an F4 tornado descended to devastate families, homes, businesses and lives.

It took the storm less than 20 minutes — the National Weather Service said it lasted from 12:54 p.m. to 1:12 p.m. — to kill 11 people, ranging in ages from 16 months to 83 years, and injure 144.

Nine of those killed were in mobile homes, one was in a vehicle, and one was in a commercial building that had been converted to residential use, according to the NWS.

And for those who lived it, the death toll may well have appeared low.

“It was a great big black thing,” said Millport resident Redus Williams, in an interview with The Tuscaloosa News shortly after the storm. “I thought it was a fire.”

Williams and his wife, Imogene, were traveling on Alabama Highway 69 South to see their daughter when the twister passed in front of their vehicle.

“We got off the road and were going to get into the ditch,” Imogene Williams said. “Before we could, it was over. It was so quick.”

While the National Weather Service said the storm initially touched down in southwestern Tuscaloosa County on the western side of the Black Warrior River, it was first spotted by witnesses three minutes later — at 12:57 p.m. — in Hulls near Moundville.

The storm hit houses in the Englewood Elementary School area and headed for Hinton Place, with the damage intensifying as it plowed through the Hillcrest Meadows subdivision.

“Hillcrest Meadows is leveled,” said Cindy Kearney, a resident of the area, at the time.

Many here were spared injury, or worse, because they were out Christmas shopping, she said.

“The houses on our block that are just gone, the people were all out,” Kearney said.

Less fortunate were the residents of Bear Creek Trailer Park, where Joy Mackey, 39, and her 20-year-old son Scott, were killed.

In a story for the 20th anniversary of the storm, Betty Weaver — Joy’s mother and Scott’s grandmother — said their loss reminded her of lessons she learned as a child.

“It’s sad to lose somebody like this,” Weaver said last year, “and the one thing that I’ve learned is, as my mother said, to treat people like it’s the last time you’ll see them because you never know when it will be.”

The killer storm leveled the mobile home park and crossed Alabama Highway 69 South, where it destroyed the then-under construction Winn-Dixie MarketPlace shopping center.

It was here where resident Joe Hayes, whose home was at the northern edge of the Hinton Place neighborhood, watched as the tornado tore through the new grocery store and came for his house.

He told The News in 2000 that he watched as it rolled a pickup truck over and over, throwing its occupants from the vehicle.

“I could see tin and trees and all kinds of things up in the air,” he said.

Hayes yelled for family members to get in the basement. As he tried to close the front door, he was thrown against a wall and his house crumbled around him.

The storm continued on toward Skyland Boulevard, where reports of damage in the residential area near the Coca-Cola bottling plant and structural damage at the JVC plant soon emerged.

The TA truckstop and the nearby Hampton Inn at Interstate 20/59’s Exit 77 were both leveled and a number of vehicles were overturned.

The tornado continued in a northeastern direction for a couple of miles before breaking up almost as quickly as it formed, the National Weather Service said.

“Ironically, the tornado dissipated as it moved into an open, unpopulated area,” the weather service said.

The path was a familiar one to Tuscaloosa County residents, as it followed closely to that of a tornado that had struck in March 2000 and killed one person.

It also was similar to the path taken by a tornado in January 1997 that heavily damaged the Five Points area and Lynn Haven neighborhood.

A 1989 tornado badly damaged the South Park neighborhood was also in the same general area, and several tornadoes in the 1970s followed a similar path across the Skyland Park neighborhood.

But, as then-Tuscaloosa County Emergency Agency spokesman Don Hartley said, the Dec. 16, 2000, tornado was unusually large for a winter storm.

“This was an unusually strong storm for this time of year,” Hartley said. “Usually, at this time of year, it’s the smaller tornadoes, F0s or F1s. This was at least an F3.”

But its timing — just days before the Christmas holiday — could not have been worse.