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Pensacola State College
“The News The Students Choose.”
March 2016
Category EF-3 tornado leaves Century devastated PSC student’s home destroyed; cleanup efforts underway
Cory King’s house was destroyed in the tornado: “It’s not the end, it’s just a new beginning,” said King.
By Tracey Squaire & Jennifer Tonnaer
I
n wake of the recent tornados that tore through Alabama and Florida, multiple local homes and businesses were destroyed. The first tornado resulted in damage for our nearby neighbors in Century, and the second resulted in destruction in Pensacola. At the entrance of the old sawmill town of Century, houses lay devastated on both sides of the road. The damage ranges from houses without roofs, crushed vehicles and totally destroyed buildings. Debris was scattered all over where it had yet to be collected and disposed of, when just the week before it had littered the streets and made travel impossible for some people. The tornado, which passed by quickly and seemed to only last a minute, left no casualties and no one severely injured, but it left a lot of damage that the community is still dealing with. Despite the devastation, the people of Century did not succumb to despair. Instead, in the face of tragedy, the community is coming together to help those whose lives were affected by the tornado. Paula Byrd, director of Pensacola State College’s Century campus, is an active member of the community and is working to help any member of the Century community who was devastated by the storm. “Students were all out of school that day, fortunately, but a lot of kids lost everything, including all the stuff that
they would have to carry back to school. We want to make sure that they have their own backpack and supplies. These are Pre-K up to high school and college students. So we’re going to have a college wide school supply drive, and then, moving forward, there will be opportunities for the college to help with cleanup and repair.” One person that Byrd especially wanted to help is PSC student Cory King, a business administration major who had lived the entire twenty-one years of his life in a home that was completely destroyed in the tornado. “I don’t think we knew that it was going to be that serious. At first, we didn’t take it too seriously,” said King. “Even my dad was kind of brushing it off, saying it wasn’t going to be that bad. And then it was moments later after we got into the hallway and closed all the doors—like as soon as we said that it’s not going to be that bad, that’s when it almost immediately took the roof off.” King said he was in his room only moments before the tornado hit, and it was his mother who had his family move into the hallway for protection. “We didn’t know much about it; she just knew that the weather was going to get bad. Then she told us to go into the hallway. Hurricanes have gone through before, and I’ve thought ‘Oh, this is just a tornado, it’s not going to be as bad as a hurricane,’ And then that ends up doing more than a hurricane ever did.” He described the house violently shaking in a way
he had never experienced before, and how his mother compared the sound of the tornado to a train. “It was pretty scary at first. After the first couple of minutes, after it took the roof off and everything, my general concern was whether there would be something else that would come through and finish the job, like, ‘Am I going to live through this?’” In a matter of minutes, King’s home was transformed from the house he had grown up in into barely recognizable wreckage. “When I went to sleep that night, I almost thought to myself—this is just a bad dream, I’m going to wake up tomorrow, and everything’s going to go back to the way that it was. And then you sort of just wake up and that’s when the realization hits.” Currently, King and his family are staying with his sister, whose home did not sustain any damage from the storm. The family has already made plans to begin rebuilding their home; they will soon demolish the wreckage so they can get started. So far, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has yet to announce whether the tragedy is enough for their help. On this, King talks about how small areas like Century sometimes get overlooked. At the moment, the community only has each other for help. “I think right now, the best thing [people can do] is
While no fatalities occurred in Century, multiple buildings and vehicles were destroyed.
See Century tornado damage Page 3
PHOTOS BY TRACEY SQUAIRE