‘Vacation of a lifetime’

BY MARY WICOFF
Commercial-News

April 18, 2009 10:32 pm

— In a dark laundry room, John and Laura Murdock crouched near a washer and dryer, praying for their lives.
They could hear glass breaking and walls ripping away, and could feel the earth shake as trees toppled to the ground. They heard explosions as trees and debris crashed onto their vacation home and their pickup truck.
“The booms … it sounded like bombs going off. It was crazy,” Laura recalled.
Only a few minutes had elapsed, but it seemed like an eternity as they waited for the tornado to pass over the rural area near Langston, Ala.
When they emerged, they were amazed to see the destruction around them. A good part of the house had been ripped away, but the laundry room was untouched.
“We walked out with the clothes on our backs,” John said. “We didn’t have a scratch. I still can’t believe we didn’t get hurt.”
From the safety of their Danville home, the couple can joke now about the adventure.
“It was the vacation of a lifetime,” Laura said.
“We came back with our lives,” John quickly added.
They later learned that the tornado, which touched down near Grant, Ala., at 3:07 p.m. on Good Friday, was rated an EF-3, with peak winds of 155 miles per hour. It covered 28 miles, and was one-half mile wide.
The storm system pounded the mid-South and southeast states, including Tennessee and Kentucky on April 9 and 10. Two died in Tennessee.
The Murdocks were able to find most of their possessions in the debris, including a laptop computer in a case. They’re waiting to hear whether their 2007 Chevrolet Silverado truck and their boat can be repaired.
A tree fell onto the roof of the truck, and the boat, which was tied up at nearby Lake Guntersville, was tossed upside down onto the deck.
The Murdocks, who both work at Quaker Oats, have vacationed at Lake Guntersville in the past. On April 5, they left Danville and drove to that area, but stayed in a different cottage, which was surrounded by 2 acres of trees. They expected to return to Danville on Easter.
Eye on the sky
Friday morning, they went fishing. They heard a storm was coming in, and they kept an eye on the weather. About noon, they tried to pull their boat to safety, but the waves were 3 feet high, and they decided to leave it tied at the dock.
Phone service to their land line went out in the morning, and John was unable to access the Internet on his laptop. Their cell phone continued to work.
The couple ate lunch while watching the weather.
“Tennessee was getting pounded. It was coming this way,” John recalled.
While standing on the deck, watching the sky in the afternoon, they heard the sirens go off. A live voice said through the loudspeakers: Tornado warning. Take shelter now.
John had his binoculars and flashlight; Laura had grabbed her purse and camera. Laura turned away to go indoors when John suddenly saw a wall of debris heading toward them from behind the trees. It was too close to see the funnel.
“Run to the laundry room now,” John shouted, while pushing Laura from behind. They were 30 seconds ahead of the storm.
Earlier in the day, the couple had decided that the lower-level laundry room would be the safest spot in the house. The owner had added the windowless room just last year, using six 4-by-4s as the base.
“That little room saved our lives,” John said.
They entered the room, switched on the light — and the power immediately went out. They got behind the washer and dryer and listened to the explosions outside. They could smell the dirt and wood as the pine trees were uprooted and splintered.
Amazingly, nothing fell off the shelves in the laundry room.
Trapped inside
The fury lasted a couple of minutes, but the Murdocks didn’t move for about 5 minutes — until everything was quiet outside.
They were able to reach 911 on their cell phone and gave their location, but then that connection went dead while they were talking to the dispatcher.
They tried to open the door of the laundry room, but debris from the house was keeping it shut. Using all his strength, John rammed the door open and they stepped outdoors. The sirens were still wailing.
At that point, it started raining and hailing, so they went back in and fashioned plastic garbage bags into raincoats.
When the rain stopped after a few minutes, the Murdocks carefully picked their way across the downed electrical lines, fallen trees and debris. They got mud and sap on their clothes.
“We were dumbfounded,” Laura said. “There were trees this way, trees that way. We didn’t know how to get out.”
They heard chainsaws ahead and saw emergency workers already out, working on the debris. They walked about a mile to the fire station.
A woman gave them a ride to a town about 20 miles away — but they had to take a roundabout way because the main road was closed by fallen trees — and they got a hotel room. The clerk gave them a discount and someone gave them a ride to Kmart to buy toiletries.
The Murdocks were amazed at everyone’s hospitality.
“They were worried about us, and they had a mess of their own,” John said.
Laura’s father and stepmother, Bill and Ruby Montgerard, left Danville immediately to pick them up.
After the storm
The next day, the couple returned to the scene and gathered their clothing and possessions from the debris. The stairway had been torn from the house, so they couldn’t go inside. A wall had fallen during the night.
They picked their clothing off tree limbs and found their Gateway laptop 300 feet from the house, undamaged. They found the cap to their Thermos, but couldn’t find the bottle itself. John found most of his tools and fishing poles.
They couldn’t find John’s eyeglasses and the cell phone charger.
They joked with the cottage’s owner about whether they’d get their damage deposit back.
Crews had been working throughout the night to clear the trees and debris. They learned later that 100 boat houses were damaged, several homes were destroyed and thousands of trees were snapped. Nobody was killed.
The Murdocks are grateful that they survived and that they had a home to come back to.
“It looked pretty good getting back to Danville,” John said. “I’d never want to go through it again.”
The Murdocks returned to work Friday, with dozens of photos to show and stories to tell.
When people ask how their vacation went, John answers: “I think it was wonderful (because) … we made it back.”
“I’ll never forget it,” Laura says. “It was the vacation of a lifetime.”

ON THE WEB
Go to the news site http://www.al.com and type Lake Guntersville tornado into the search engine. Slide shows of the damage will come up.
To see the weather service’s initial report, go to: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/hun/stormsurveys/2009-04-10/index.php