Our experience with the Beech Island tornado
Friday April 10 2009 10:42 PM I got a severe tornado warning alert on my cell phone saying tornado had been spotted. Checked online with Amy over my shoulder and knew we had to get out of here this thing was headed straight for Beech Island. Beech Island is a small rural community, a tornado coming through Beech Island affects everyone, it’s kinda small here and not many places to hide from mother nature.
We had a close call last year and when the alerts came I couldn’t get out because I didn’t have any way to get down to the bottom of the driveway to get to safety. My only way was to get into the woods if I could. I told my son he would have to go into the shelter without me last you. This year when the alerts came nobody was going to be separated. Amy pulled the car up as high into the drive as she could and she and our son broke down my wheelchair while I made sure the animals could get into the kennel which would offer them the best safety since it has flexible netting and they wouldn’t get lifted and blown out of it.
Animals cannot go into public shelter locations.
We headed out knowing this thing was right above us and we found the debris path pretty quick. The store is only a few minutes away so we got into shelter rather quickly. The Todd’s Convenience Store on the corner of Beech Island Ave and Sand Bar Ferry Road in Beech Island South Carolina kindly opened their doors to shelter towns folk and everyone worked together to keep everyone calm and offer hope.
Everyone was on their cells calling loved ones letting them know where they were, checking on children or family if they couldn’t get home and keeping up with the alerts from people who still had electricity. By this time all the power was out for those in the path of the tornado.
To the left of the store we saw ambulance and emergency crews and reports coming back from the scene told us that a man lost his life. Many were realizing just how serious this was. In the store with no background noise or lights you could hear children crying softly, scared and parents even more silently crying while trying to assure them we would all be ok.
We were okay. Everyone in the store was safe, the only damage to the store was a facade that was blown down. Loose stuff was scattered about and a trucker’s hook was blown open but nobody in the store was hurt and when the fire department let them know we were all clear many left not quite realizing that all clear did not mean the roads were safe for travel.
Some understood this and stayed behind to emotionally support each other. We all knew what things were going to look like once the sun came up.
Amy and I left when we heard the street we live off from was cleared of trees. Shortly after we headed up the road though we were suddenly stopped by a power line that went down. Everyone was trying to decide whether or not to go over the down lines, there were no other roads that were clear of down trees. In the end, everyone did carefully cross the down lines. We finally got home to find our home undamaged. Pets scared but fine. Since we were without power and totally unprepared for this tornado we headed into the city of Aiken to try to find someplace to eat. The City was untouched by the tornadoes so finding food was pretty easy.
We learned that New Ellenton, another little town close to ours was also hit badly. It’s so close that my son went to New Ellenton middle school and the school had been damaged by the tornado.
We went back to our dark home but were glad that we were together through this whole ordeal. We had no clue till morning just how close we really were. Had the twirling winds shifted across the road it would have hit the store we were all sheltered in. We and a few others had actually drove right under the twister just before it started to attack the bank and uproot two yards full of trees.
All things came together to keep our family and the families who made it to the store safe.
Here are a couple of videos I took this morning as we drove back down to the store to see if Amy would be able to work today, we took another video as we were headed into North Augusta to get some groceries. WARNING…COULD BE SOME PROFANITY IN THE VIDEOS, Sorry….it’s just us 
Here are some vids taken by another towns person. I think he caught some better video than I did. I’m not so good at video documentary yet and I have a really crappy camera.
And finally some local news video’s
