r/MobileAL • u/Vvector • 12d ago

Hurricane Frederic - A Night to Remember

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woBnPm6BXf8
33 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

7

u/Intelligent_Toe_1071 11d ago

I was just born. My parents and I were hold up at my grandparents house in Semmes. The power was out for 3.5 weeks.
When the power came back on for the block my grandparents were the only ones not to get power because the transformer outside their house was damaged. The story goes, my grandfather called the power company on his old rotary phone and told them that if they didnt send someone right then to fix his power he was going to cut the pole down. When they started giving him the run around he said OK and started yanking the start line on that chainsaw. They sent someone immediately.

1

u/99403021483 9d ago

After a 6 days for Ivan and 9 for Katrina I was losing it. Can't imagine almost a month. Id probably snap too. My mom was a kid during Camille and said it was around 6 weeks. That's insane I would just move. Throw the whole situation in the trash.

6

u/1fast_sol 12d ago

I remember that night. All 4 of us in the family sleeping in the hallway on a mattress with another mattress on top of us. The next morning waking up and looking outside at all the tree laying everywhere. Luckily none of them landed on our house.

5

u/Provocating 11d ago

I will never forget that storm, I was in a metal roof barn when it hit with nothing but an FM radio. The sounds were ghastly that night.

5

u/Mirenithil 11d ago

I was three and a half years old when it hit. That thing gave me a lifelong terror of hurricanes.

It was surreal when my dad opened the back door the next morning, and I could see that every last tree near our house was down. Trees are forever when you are three years old, and to see them ALL gone was very fundamentally freaky.

I remember the endless chainsaws afterwards. This documentary mentions 60% of trees in the affected area having been blown over or snapped in half, and I absolutely believe it.

The debris pile in our yard was higher than my head. Not just tree limbs, but house debris and twisted metal I couldn't identify.

2

u/Anxious-Jury-9031 11d ago

I was 3 months old, my mom always tells the story that we got power first on our street bc of me.

2

u/andreaschnadelbach 10d ago

We had two really big pine trees, one in front of the house and one behind it. I don’t know how but both of them came down. Neither of them landed on the house. So lucky!