One year after an EF-3 tornado tore through Midtown Mobile on Christmas Day 2012, the streets look and feel like they did before the storm — even as two of the neighborhood’s most prominent institutions, Murphy High School and Trinity Episcopal Church, continue years-long rebuilding efforts.
On Silverwood Street, one of the hardest-hit blocks in the city, homes have been repaired, streetlights have been restored and yards have grown back in. For residents who rode out the storm, the calm surface hides a memory that hasn’t faded.
Angela Salter was dropped off at her Silverwood Street home with her daughter just minutes before the tornado arrived. She had gone inside, then stepped into the backyard to bring in her dog, when she looked up and saw a wall of whirling debris bearing down on the neighborhood.
“It was shocking to see this tornado heading for us. It was surreal,” Salter said. She got her 10-year-old daughter into the bathtub and told her to start praying as the storm hit. “We heard debris just slamming the house. It was so loud. We could feel the whole house just vibrating.”
When the wind died down and Salter walked outside, the street she knew had been transformed. Across the way, the porch roof at 90-year-old Marie Feaster’s house had collapsed, and the home had sustained additional roof damage. Feaster and her family, who had gathered there for Christmas, were unharmed.
Silverwood Street’s streetlights took until summer to come back online, running behind the city’s broader repair schedule. But that delay was minor compared with the road still ahead for Murphy High School and Trinity Episcopal Church, both located just blocks away and both still under repair a year later.
Murphy High School reopened for classes not long after the storm, but Mobile County Public School System Executive Manager of Facilities Tommy Sheffield said the campus will not be fully repaired for roughly two more years.
“Murphy High School is back in operation, but there are still a few buildings not accessible. However, it is fully functional,” Sheffield said. He noted that the band room, auditorium and natatorium remain closed because they were not classified as priority repairs, with classroom space for students given precedence instead. As of early December, students were relying on six of 20 portable classrooms brought onto campus, most of them used for band instruction.
Sheffield learned the extent of the damage firsthand. His son, a Mobile police officer, called to tell him Murphy had been hit and that he should get to the campus.
“I went from Dauphin Street to South Street. At first I thought, ‘Wow, we got lucky. It missed us.’ Then I walked around the tennis courts and toward the band room, which is one of the hardest hit areas. That’s when I knew we had a problem. It was devastating,” Sheffield said.
The school system produced an in-house documentary, “Murphy Tornado,” chronicling the night of the storm, the extent of the damage and the temporary relocation of students to Clark-Shaw. Sheffield said final repair plans for Murphy were expected to be approved after the holidays, with bidding on the first phase of construction to follow in the spring or summer. The work will be completed in phases designed to minimize disruption to students.
Trinity Episcopal Church, meanwhile, is on a faster timeline than Murphy High, though its damage was severe. The Parish Hall lost its roof and a front wall and required extensive interior repairs. The church’s sanctuary, which had just undergone a $1.1 million renovation in 2010, is largely being rebuilt after the tornado tore off its roof and destabilized the structure.
The Rev. Bailey Norman, Trinity’s rector, said the congregation has made steady progress even though services have not yet returned to the sanctuary.
“Things definitely look better today than they did just after the storm,” Norman said. “We are still not back in the church proper, but we are looking forward to our Christmas Eve services in the Parish Hall. We will mark the anniversary of the storm and give thanks for our community that pulled together in the days and months following the tornado.”
Norman said there is no firm completion date for the sanctuary, though the new roof was being installed as the anniversary approached. He added that the congregation’s focus has remained on its neighbors rather than its building.
“Our primary concern was for the people of Midtown,” Norman said. “We are thankful that no one was killed or severely injured in the storm. Trinity Church is a joyful place, and we see ourselves as filling a vital role in the community.”
Trinity wasn’t the only Midtown congregation devastated by the storm. Sweet Pilgrim Baptist Church sustained damage so extensive that the building had to be demolished. Pastor Julius Bryant, who had led the congregation for only four months when the tornado struck, learned of the destruction secondhand.
Bryant was at home that afternoon when his wife called from her job at Mobile Infirmary to alert him to the tornado warnings. He then reached the church’s head trustee, who went to the building and described the damage to Bryant over the phone in real time.
“He literally walked me through what he saw,” Bryant said. “He told me, ‘Pastor, the roof is gone!'”
The scope of the destruction became clear when Bryant later surveyed the building himself, finding that the church’s balcony had been thrown down into the pews below.
A year later, the contrast across Midtown tells the story of recovery on different timelines: a residential street that looks nearly untouched, and two houses of worship and a high school still working, phase by phase, toward the day their buildings match the resilience their communities showed in the storm’s immediate aftermath.