The Dairy Blog

Disaster in Enterprise

This past Saturday I had one of both the saddest but most fulfilling days in my 42 years of life. Along with one of our most gracious route drivers Steve Smith, I had the opportunity to take ice cream to the victims and workers of the disaster relief of many of the people involved in the recent tornado that struck Enterprise, Alabama in Coffee County on 3/1/07.

You always hear that the news coverage and pictures don’t do it justice - well there is no other way to put it into words and to describe the devastation that we witnessed. I thought of all pictures of World War II in Europe and that was the nearest image in my mind’s eye that I could equate this to. A community of 22,000 had around 500 homes destroyed or damaged, my old high school that I graduated from was all but gone, and not to mention all the businesses and landscaping that was wiped out.

I know (or knew) this town like the back of my hand but literally got lost many times driving from one Red Cross station to another since all of my surroundings had been altered so severely.

Steve and I met in Enterprise around 12:30 and went to the first Red Cross station that was set up in a park next to a YMCA off College St., close to my old Junior High school. The park was about a block section that was totally occupied by volunteers, construction workers, and people from that community that had homes destroyed or impacted in some way. As I pulled up and parked, I looked around as I was viewing the first of the destruction that I had seen to this point. One side of the park to the east was the YMCA, mostly still intact, the north side was trees that were hardly touched, then I looked in the other two directions and every house was either completely flattened or close to it.

Children without homes were coming by asking for ice cream, this was where my FIRST of many heartaches hit.

I met many people from all over the country that were there either with the Red Cross or other organizations or there on their own just to help out. R. Cameron Ballantyne, Red Cross Director Communications, Marketing, is there from Texas, Diane Bates with the Red Cross is down from Ohio, and one fellow from the Red Cross Jeffrey who asked for a Brown Cow bar, he’s from Georgia and familiar with Mayfield. Another Red Cross person that was our guide taking us around to all the locations was Charlie Brower from Pensacola, Fla. I also met a gentleman from North Carolina that was familiar with Mayfield and he asked for a Brown Cow as well, if I recall correctly, he was with Southern Baptist Disaster Relief and had plenty of people with him cooking, feeding and gathering clothes and other essential items.

We stayed at that station for a short period and then packed up and headed for our second station. As we were pulling away with Charlie leading the way, me behind him, and Steve following in the truck, we could only go a short distance before I would look in my rearview mirror and see people chasing the truck screaming for ice cream. We would pull over, and I would get out of my car and get product out of the truck for them. After a couple of stops, I gave my wife and mother a box of ice cream and told them to hand out ice cream from the car so we could make it to our next destination and to keep people from getting too close to the moving truck. It was slow going anyway as the streets are still littered with debris from the storm that was 10 days past.

When we arrived at our second location, which was only about a mile from the first, but took us about 15 minutes to get to, I got out again and surveyed the area. This station was much smaller in size but just as busy as the first. When we got the truck parked people started jogging toward us with tools in hand and covered in dust and dirt from head to toe, I felt my heart sink again. One fellow came up and said “we saw your truck going down the other street and tried to wave you over”. He asked for about 50 sandwiches for the workers which we gladly gave him. The one thing I kept noticing at this area was a lot of kids, probably in high school in red tee-shirts working like crazy, hauling wheelbarrows full of debris and shoveling like crazy. Two of these girls were carrying old books, also covered in dust, from houses and placing them in a container under a tent. One boy finally walked over to me, stuck out his hand and introduced himself. I asked how long they had been working and where they were from. He said they had been there most of the day and were up from Ft. Walton, Fla. By now my heart was down by my knees. These kids were donating their Saturday to assist cleaning up this nasty mess in my hometown.

We stayed here about 30 minutes and headed for our third location after grabbing a bottle of water from the big tubs of drinks.

Steve Smith had ran his route this morning in the Montgomery area and volunteered his time to come help with this, I wanted to stay at each location longer but I had to think about Steve’s time since it was now approaching 2:00 p.m. Enterprise is about a 1½ hour drive from Montgomery.

We left there heading for the Red Cross central headquarters station that was set up in a deserted furniture store downtown Enterprise. I walked in and was absolutely amazed at the set up in this building. They probably had around 40 people, most sitting at their little temporary station with their laptop computers gathering information and rounding up supplies. It reminded me of Central Communications tents you see on CNN in a war zone. They were all very happy to see us too and we handed out product and put a few boxes in their refrigerator’s small freezer.

One of the ladies that Dan Allison (with Mayfield) first reached with the Red Cross was Sandy. She came and met us outside along with Diane Bates who I contacted to get instructions for the day’s events. She asked where we were going next, and as normal I said “I really don’t know, Charlie is kind of guiding me around to the different locations”. Charlie told her that I graduated from Enterprise High school and that I really wanted to go by there and see those people. For anyone that doesn’t already know, we lost 9 people in Enterprise that day, 8 of those were killed in what we always referred to as “The 3^rd Hall” at the high school. All of them were children from 16-17 years old and most getting ready to graduate in a few months. Diane ask me if I was sure I wanted to do that, she said she has been with the Red Cross for many years but nothing that she has seen has ever compared to the school. I was very apprehensive at that point but decided that we would drive over there to look from the outside and to treat the workers and school personnel with ice cream.

When we pulled up, suddenly, my heart came out of my knee and went straight into my throat. Standing at the entrance was an armed National Guardsman saying that we were not allowed any further. Charlie walked up with his Red Cross smock and said he needed to see Stacey, the head of maintenance for the school. Before he came out, a lady name Ms. Cannon, who works in the school office came out and gave everybody hugs and thanked us for coming. She still had a blackened eye from the storm. She immediately called Stacey on his two way radio and had him to come out to greet us. He shook my hand and talked for a minute, when he found out that I graduated from the high school, we said he could take me, Charlie and any of the adults with him in to see the damage. I hesitated, but for some reason knew that it would probably be my only chance to ever see my school again.

Steve and my wife decided that they would rather not see the carnage, my mother and I made the choice of walking through with Stacey and Charlie, it’s something I will NEVER forget. I’ve always admired my father’s courage of serving two tours in Vietnam but that only grew with what I witnessed inside the school and thought what a war zone must look like.

As we approached the breezeway that leads to the front door, Stacey pointed up to a banner hanging overhead, although as soon as I saw it I knew, he said, “That’s from one of our biggest rivals in football.” It was a banner that had Central High, Phenix City, Ala. with it totally covered with students’ signatures from that school. We went in the front door and then into ‘The 1^st Hall’, the first step I took there was a big crunch noise under my feet from all the broken glass. I turned to the right to walk down the hall but noticed a big picture still hanging on the wall, it was of the 1982-1983 EHS Wildcats State Champion Football team. That was my senior year. I had missed playing football that year for the first time since I was old enough to play. We spent my sophomore and junior year in Auburn where I played, but by the time we settled back in at Enterprise my senior year, they had already played their first game and I decided not to play. Charlie wanted me to stand in front of the picture though so he could take a snap shot. As we headed down the hall crunching every step of the way until we came to a room on the right where I remembered I had some classes. All the windows were blown out, desks were turned over and school papers were everywhere. We walked toward the next room and my mother stepped inside and said look at the clock, it was stopped at the exact time that the tornado hit, 1:16. The first hall was the least affected since the tornado started and hit at the other end which we were walking toward, the new science wing that had been added after I graduated. It then for the most part, jumped over the 1^st & 2^nd halls and came back down on top of the 3^rd Hall. Just the suction of the tornado over the first two halls caused the ceiling to crack, locker doors to fly open and frames of the skylights to be torn completely out of the ceiling.

We got to the end of the hallway and took a left and headed toward the 2^nd hall. Each hall is connected at each end with another short corridor and run parallel to one another with a small outside courtyard type area between each of the 4 halls. The 4^th hall was also added after my time at EHS. When we got to the second hall and turned left, the damage was worst then the 1^st hall. Lockers that lined both sides of the hall were either on the floor or hanging out of the wall. Again I walked into another room where I  had some classes and noticed that the tornado evacuation sign was still posted on the bulletin board and then thought back to when I was there and how scared those kids must have been through this 30 second ordeal. The hall was still intact other then debris everywhere and you could still see to the other end about 25 yards away.

We then left that hall and made our way in the direction of the 3^rd hall, the one I was not sure if I wanted see. Charlie asked if I wanted to and I said not really.

What I saw in the 3rd hall was obviously the worst, as we turned the corner, I saw about 10 yards of hallway, lockers leaning over or down completely, then from that point on, there was no hallway, just mounds of rubble where the last 15 yards or so of hall used to be. Cement slabs, cinder blocks, and twisted metal, it looked like there was never a hall there, only a huge pile of debris sitting in the outside air......everything was gone in the part of the hall but the rubble. when I dropped my sunglasses from the top of my head back over my eyes and asked Stacey how he was dealing with this.

As Charlie took pictures, Stacey said let me show you something Charlie, he knelt down and there in the background above all the debris of the 3^rd hall was the steeple of the church next to the school standing tall. Charlie took some pictures and I told them that I had seen enough and headed back toward the front. About half way back, Stacey said “let me show you something else Eddie, the 3^rd hall was obviously a tragedy, but come with me and let me show you something positive.” He led us to the area that used to be the science wing, and stopped at the end of a breezeway where the hall doors used to be. It was nothing but debris again where he said 160 kids where taking shelter and not one child there got severely injured. In fact, this made the news but if you didn’t hear, that was the place where a teacher that is 5 months pregnant covered two children with her body to protect them. She was the only one severely injured; fortunately, she and her baby are going to be alright.

This is something that will take longer than my lifetime to overcome. Hopefully with help they can get through it. I actually heard today that the school will be re-opening.

I just want to thank everyone within our organization for being so willing to help with this. Starting with management for allowing us to donate so much product, to Dan Allison for getting the ball rolling and making initial contact with the Red Cross, Ronny Bayless and all the warehouse personnel for getting the product to us on short notice. My mother Marie and wife Linda for helping with handing out product, but most of all Steve Smith for getting up early Saturday morning to run his route and then going down to Enterprise and driving the truck around and not getting home until around 7:30 that night. We have a great company to be so willing to do this and I’m proud to be working with Mayfield.

Thanks to all and please keep all the people of Enterprise, Wilcox County & Americus, Ga. in your thoughts and prayers.

Check out some of the pictures here.

Eddie Bavaro

Mayfield / Montgomery