‘Gone in an instant': Families on Killingsworth Cove Road pick up the pieces after tornado

Yahoo

22-05-2025

KILLINGSWORTH COVE, Ala. (WHNT) — Families living on parts of Killingsworth Cove Road are picking up the pieces Wednesday after a tornado devastated and destroyed their homes.
Pictures, family heirlooms and memories swept away in seconds. Thankfully, no one was hurt.
'All the remnants of the shop are scattered through the yard, and I've got most of that piled up over here now,' Dusty Gipson, who lost his family home and workshop to the tornado, said. 'And then everything from the house was just strolled across the street. Everything. 42 years, 42 years of life. Just strolled from one end of the community to another. So, it's pretty heartbreaking.'
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Dusty Gipson and his family returned from the storm shelter Tuesday evening to find their home ruined and crumbled to the ground. The staircase leading out their back door was the only thing left standing.
'And that was it,' Gipson said. 'Nothing else, nothing else standing, you know. It was just all the emotions, you know, everything you've ever worked for just gone in an instant, and how fragile life is…Everything that we owned is right here in this field.'
The National Weather Service confirmed an EF-2 tornado passed through the area Tuesday. Winds from that storm picked up debris from Gipson's home and threw it across the road into a nearby field.
Just down the street, the last-minute actions of a son saved his mother's life. Glennis Black said her brother got their mother out of the home they grew up in just seconds before it was destroyed.
'Put her in the car, went 200 yards, and it hit, and the house was gone,' Black said. 'There's no question nobody could've lived through that.'
Now, they're trying to do what they can to piece together decades of history.
'Everything in her life is gone,' Black said. 'Honestly, we're just kind of going through the motions. Just really numb, we're really tired.'
After a day spent cleaning up what remains, the families are determined to get back on their feet. They're thankful that no one was hurt.
Beneath the rubble, both families are finding glimpses of light.
'We were digging and crawling under the roof, and I found her and daddy's wedding pictures,' Black said. 'And the glass was still perfect and everything…Little things like that, that there's no duplicate of. And you can never get those replaced.'
'The storm shelter don't allow you to have pets,' Gipson said. 'He was in his crate…When we got up here last night, we feared the worst…When one of our neighbors, a good close friend, he dug through the rubble last night and found our dog. He was actually safe and sound. So that was, that was huge. That was the positive we needed, you know, to kind of, to get us through the night.'
There's a GoFundMe for Black's mother, Dorothy Osmer, to help her recover from the damage.
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