GOSHEN – Inside the United Methodist Church, the lights flickered once, twice and then went black.The congregation of 140 was about midway through its Palm Sunday service. And despite the sudden darkness, choir director Carol Scroggin began the next hymn, ``Jehovah Jireh.''
But the choir's voice was choked off. Wind bellowed like thunder outside the church, located on Cherokee County's south border.
``Mrs. Scroggin yelled for everybody to hit the floor,'' said 16-year-old Christa Rhinehart. ``I hit the floor. I heard glass breaking and kids crying. There was a crunch.''
It was 11:35 a.m.
Somewhere just west of the church, high humidity, warm moist air below and cooler, drier air above had converged to birth a tornado. The winds in such tornadoes can reach 300 miles per hour.
In her house 50 yards from the church, B.J. Ogg watched the dark funnel leap and stagger across the grassy hills behind her home. She looked on as it splintered pine trees and flattened a house.
``I saw it hit that house over there,'' she said, pointing toward rubble in the distance. ``Then it came this-a-way.
``I was terrified. I finally got enough sense to duck down. I could still see these big trees were falling over and the shingles were flying all over the place, going crazy.''
When Mother Nature finished her assault, Ms. Ogg ran for the phone. It was dead. She went out her front door and looked at the church.
It was as if a hand had grabbed the black shingle roof and hammered it down. The force of the wind and the roof's weight crushed most of the church's red brick walls, but the front door and roof were intact.
The wind snapped off trees at about 12 feet off the ground. It shoved cars across the parking lot. It flung red-seated church pews across the church lawn. It blended red hymnals, fresh flowers, and shoes with brick and shingles.
People were running from the church. Others were trapped inside.
``There were a lot of people screaming and a lot of hurting,'' Ms. Ogg said.
Piedmont Police Officer Blake Strickland said this morning 21 people died from injuries at the church, including eight children. At least 83 were injured.
When the tornado struck, the church was in the middle of its Easter drama, ``Watch the Lamb.'' Children had just walked to the front, palm leaves in their hands.
Survivors remember much the same things: The roar of the wind. Shattering windows. A rain of glass, brick and wood. Screams.
``I heard a roaring on my left,'' said a woman who would identify herself only as Linda. ``We heard screams. We ducked under the benches.''
``We just heard a roar and glass started breaking,'' said George Scroggin, Carol Scroggin's husband. ``I didn't know what was happening.''
``I started hollering, `Get down! Get down!' '' said Mrs. Scroggin.
The wind blew in windows. Then the wall.
Mrs. Scroggin found herself in about a two-foot crawl space and clambered out.
Mark Fornby, a toddler, ran out of the church when the tornado struck, got into his family's car and buckled himself in. He was not injured.
State troopers got their first emergency call at about 11:50 a.m. Emergency personnel from Piedmont, Oxford, Anniston and across Etowah and Cherokee County responded. Cranes lumbered up Alabama 9 and strained to lift the roof. Chain saws chewed into limbs, clearing away fallen trees.
So many non-emergency vehicles, loaded with people who came to help or gawk, crowded Alabama 9 that it created a traffic jam from the U.S. 278 Bypass to Goshen. Emergency vehicles had to slow while traffic crept onto the road's steep shoulders to get out of the way. State troopers repeatedly urged people to turn back, but many kept on going to Goshen.
Piedmont police officer Mike Nessler, the first officer on the scene, saw the tornado moving away, a ``thick, gray thing'' slouching across the road.
``It seemed like everybody in the place was injured,'' he said.
Rain was coming down in sheets. Piedmont Police Sgt. Mike Putman burrowed into the rubble to find trapped victims. He found one family huddled beneath a pew. Another man had a section of wall embedded in his leg. Hands reached out for help.
``Instinctively, I just started looking for the children,'' Putman said. ``There was no place you could step. There was blood everywhere.''
Rescue workers said families identified some victims by their clothing: a child in a pink dress and stockings, a boy in red jeans with a blue-green shirt.
Jack Blair lost his 54-year-old wife Ethelene. They only live about a mile north of the church. He was there 10 minutes after the twister hit. He saw the demolished building. Then he saw his wife.
``We asked why. But it's not for us to answer, I don't believe,'' he said, fighting off tears. ``I saw her there before they took her away.''
He touched her wrist as she lay on the front lawn.
``I was feeling for life,'' he said. But her wrist was cold.
Jan Pike volunteered throughout the day to care for the injured at Piedmont's Southside Elementary school. She was smeared with blood.
She remembers trying to save Kirk Scroggin. His neck was broken and rescuers couldn't get him the oxygen he needed.
``His little girl was tugging on my shirt saying, `Please save my daddy. Please save my daddy. Please save my daddy,'~ '' Ms. Pike said.
Ms. Pike held the girl behind her back with one hand while she covered her father up with the other.
``I'm not going to sleep for a while,'' she said.
Army Sgt. 1st Class Lee Branham heard about the church's collapse while he was working out at a gym at Fort McClellan. He and friends drove up to help out. When he arrived, at about 12:30, the church's front yard was spotted with debris, injured and dead.
``Nothing prepares you for something like this,'' he said.
One man had died when a telephone pole smashed into a van in which he was sitting in the parking lot. Cherokee County Coroner Larry Tucker said most of the dead were seated near the crumbled outside walls.
By mid-afternoon, sun splashed down on the church. Many rescue workers started to load their equipment and head home.
The church's pastor, Rev. Kelly Clem, spent Sunday night in Anniston at the home of Herb Williamson, district supervisor for the United Methodist Church. Mrs. Clem's husband Dale and daughter Sara survived. Her 4-year-old daughter Hannah was killed.
``She was in grief,'' Williamson said. ``She lay down but didn't get much sleep.''
Sitting in the Gateway Restaurant in Piedmont this morning, Brenda McGinnis remembered Amy Woods, one of the children killed in the church.
``She loved to come up here after church and eat banana pudding,'' she said. ``Oh, she was precious. This community is just torn all to pieces.''
Debris was still scattered across the site today: a tennis shoe, a bag of books, an umbrella, a crushed jungle gym. A herd of reporters from as far away as Chattanooga and Atlanta outnumbered members of the state troopers and the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department trying to keep people away.
Standing in the debris, Nessler said knowing this community ``it won't be long before there's another church here called Goshen United Methodist Church.''
The church was founded as part of the Methodist Episcopal Church South in 1905 at a site on the old Centre Highway in Piedmont. It moved to its current location on Alabama 9, just north of Piedmont, in 1951. Attendance averaged about 100. For Palm Sunday, though, attendance was higher.
``We never know why disasters happen,'' Mrs. Scroggin said. ``I'm sure there's a purpose in it. The devil can't stand it when a church is doing good. But we've got to keep our faith in God. That's the only way I'm going to get through this.''
For more, visit the Palm Sunday Special Section.
