Dealing with the dead is a huge task in a tiny Alabama community where nearly two dozen people died in a tornado outbreak.
March 7, 2019
Pastor Rusty Sowell, with the county coroner behind him, would put his hand on the door to each Sunday school classroom at Providence Baptist Church, where dozens of family members were told to gather. Inside, people awaited word on whether loved ones were dead or alive. “The toughest part was opening the door and looking in the eyes of that family member who was hoping against hope that it wasn’t their loved one that had died,” said Sowell, pastor of Providence Baptist. “I would say to myself, ‘Just breathe, just breathe.’”
Once the dead were gathered from fields and roads and splintered homes, each was given a post-mortem examination in a portable autopsy facility set up in the school’s parking lot. The dead were identified either through ID cards, tattoos, scars or photos.Then came the process of notifying the next of kin at Providence Baptist, just a few miles from where the tornado scoured the ground, littering gullies with pieces of homes and stripping ridges bare of trees.
“I saw a lot of love from the family to each other, and a lot of faith. Their faith was holding them up,” he said.
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