The same supercell storm that ripped through Tuscaloosa, Fultondale and Pleasant Grove, demolishing homes and leaving a trail of dead and missing, destroyed the predominantly black Bethel Baptist Church, Pratt City, on April 27.
The church had closed at 1:30 p.m., letting preschool classes out early and canceling Bible study for the first time anyone could remember. The storm system came through shortly after 6 p.m.
Winds of at least 140 miles an hour tore the roof off the gymnasium and sanctuary and threw one church van into a ravine. The church’s day care and offices were also demolished.
In a phone interview April 29, Pastor T.S. Lewis said his goal is first to rebuild the community, then work on the church damage.
“We’re still our church, we’re just a church without walls,” he said.
Volunteers from Bethel Baptist arrived at 7 a.m. on April 29 to move tables and chairs to a relief center at Scott Elementary School on Hibernian Street. The center has a generator, and although people can’t sleep there, Lewis said they will provide food, clothes, shoes and transportation all night if necessary.
“While they’re now homeless, we’re going to make sure they’re not hopeless,” he said.
In the first two days after the storm, cleanup crews looked for membership records, tax files and any scrap of the church’s 114-years history they could salvage, Deacon Lee Anderson said. Bethel Baptist was rebuilt in 1990 on the same lot, but the first church was established in 1897.
Like many members who helped clean up, Anderson is too grateful that he and his loved ones survived the storm to be overwhelmed by the loss of the church building.
“You don’t sorrow over what happened,” Anderson said. “You pick yourself up and thank God you’re alive.”
Though most of the church was reduced to piles of bricks and wooden beams, some rooms looked untouched. In the kitchen downstairs, plastic forks never moved from their holders and serving spoons and tea pitchers hung undisturbed over the stove throughout the storm.
Jim Stefkovich, the meteorologist in charge at The National Weather Service in Birmingham, said crews are continuing to survey the path of the storm and, at press time, had not determined the amount of destruction in Pratt City.
About 350 troops from the National Guard patrolled the area after the storm for security and support. Police roadblocks on Highway 78 prevented people from bringing their cars into Pratt City, so people parked on the sides of the street and in abandoned parking lots and walked to their homes.
In the wildest moments of the storm, Bethel Baptist members Rhonda Reed and Shelisa Spencer said the only sound they heard was a long, deafening train whistle. After the storm there was an unreal silence, then the smell of gas.
The natural gas leaks were so powerful in Pratt City that police pulled families out of their homes the day after the storm so they could breathe slightly fresher air, Reed said.
The next day, people wandered in the streets looking for their homes and belongings, disoriented because the storm uprooted street signs and leveled homes.
An apartment complex next to Bethel Baptist lost its second floor.
Spencer, 20, attended Bethel Baptist her entire life and lives in Forestdale.
“As soon as I saw the church, I just broke down,” she said. “I broke down.”
Despite the damage to the church and neighborhood, the Bethel Baptist family has remained intact. The church planned to meet for Sunday service on April 29 at 10 a.m. in the Fair Park Arena in Birmingham.
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