BRAD MCEWEN: Albany storms are bad enough without inventing new horrors

If I told you 104 people died in the ferocious tornado that tore through eastern Dougherty County leaving a wake of tangled trees, powers, lines and twisted metal, would it make for a better story?

If it were true that two parents in their final desperate act as the freight train winds bore down on them stuffed their 3-month-old infant into a clothes dryer just moments before their home was obliterated, killing them both, would you care just a little more?

I was at ground zero for the Jan. 2 storm that left my Rawson Circle neighborhood in shambles, with trees stabbed through roofs, vehicles flattened into metal flapjacks. I saw some of the first images of the utter ruin of the Paradise Village mobile home park on Holly Drive, and was, uncomfortably, the first reporter to learn that four people had been killed Sunday night as authorities and emergency personnel flocked into east Albany to secure the area and begin search and rescue operations.

My colleagues and I have done little in the last three weeks save listening to the harrowing tales of terrified Albany residents and combing through image after image of this storm-ravaged community.

I can tell you with unquestionable certainty that the series of storms that ripped through our neighborhoods and left thousands without power and countless more wounded was every bit as horrible as reported.

Words like devastation, ruin, demolished, ravaged, obliterated, Armageddon are all apt descriptors. What’s happened to the residents of Albany-Dougherty County, and to their neighbors to the south and east in the last three weeks is brutal.

Embellishment is not needed.

Yet within minutes of a “reported” tornado (it’s since been confirmed as at least an EF-2 twister), our social media channels, which have become the very lifeline of communication for so many of our citizens, was flooded with posts about the piles of bodies and the babies wrenched from their parents arms and sucked into the swirling winds.

One post I read — just minutes after Dougherty County Coroner Michael Fowler confirmed the four deaths — said a paramedic on the scene had told the poster’s friend that there were already 60 deaths in Radium Springs alone.

Even as a member of the media, which, sadly has to highlight the worst trials and tribulation, I struggle to understand the need for such hyperbole, the need to turn what is already an unthinkable situation into the stuff of nightmares.

People die in storms. It’s the sad reality of what mother nature is capable of. Although human beings have figured out ways to wreak untold havoc and mass destruction, we’re frequently reminded that powerful storms can make areas look like bombs went off in them.

What has happened in Albany and southern Georgia is terrible. Four dead is four too many, and there were 11 more in South Georgia. That no one died in Albany on Jan. 2 from the direct impact of that storm is a further blessing.

I firmly believe we all need to take a step back and think about what has happened. We need to soak in the sights of blasted landscapes and buildings with no roofs and bare property where buildings once stood. We need to take a hard look and never forget the images of children’s toys strewn through a field or insulation dangling from the tops of battered and broken oak trees. And we need to see these things for what they are.

We also need to react to what we see the way countless numbers of our friends and neighbors have since that first blast of straight line wind crippled our town—with compassion and positive action. We need to embrace our fellows, feed and shelter them, save their scattered property and fire up the chainsaws and pull out the rakes.

We need to flood the Dougherty EOC (Emergency Operations Center) with phone calls about wanting to lend a hand, or try to overwhelm charitable giving sites with a high-volume of donation traffic.

We need to spread the word to our out-of-town friends and family and let them know that we need help. And that we’re bowed but not broken.

We need to join together and become the Only One Albany and the #AlbanyStrong we hear so much about.

What we shouldn’t do is flock to Facebook, Twitter and all the rest with misinformation, fueled by our lesser nature. There is no need for propaganda. There’s no need for that wasted the effort.

Let the facts stand and let these storms be the very real things that caused millions of dollars of damage, wounded citizens and took lives. Believe me when I tell you, the truth is bad enough.

Email Brad McEwen at [email protected]. Follow @ABH_BradMcEwen on Twitter.