BEAUREGARD, AL — Scott Fillmer’s phone buzzed and blared at 1:59 p.m. Sunday. It was an emergency notification from the National Weather Service, and it contained a grave message — take shelter now. A tornado warning is in effect for the Beauregard area for the next 46 minutes.
He and his wife sprang into action. They grabbed their pets — three cats and a puppy — and darted for the laundry room. Minutes later, he heard a loud, familiar noise.
“I could literally hear the tornado coming, sounded like a freight train,” he told Patch in a Twitter message.
At or around 2:06 p.m., an EF-4 tornado with winds of about 170 mph struck his house. When it was all over, he stepped outside to assess the damage.
“Frick that tornado went right over our property/house, I’ve got someone else’s fence posts everywhere, lost huge trees… heard the freight train coming, felt the pressure drop. Closer than I ever want to be again,” he wrote in a tweet.
Sirens blared as he looked on at the devastation. Downed power lines lay trapped underneath a pair of massive, toppled trees. There was debris strewn everywhere, including bits of other peoples’ homes, and cars were flipped over. A random mattress sat in his driveway. Major roads were “impassable.” Homes in the distance appeared obliterated.
This metal wrapped around the tree is everywhere, in the distance is what used to be Capps Sausage. #tornado in Beauregard pic.twitter.com/xAnQwWqvKV
— Scott Fillmer (@scottfillmer) March 3, 2019
More storm damage… about to totally dark, I still hear helicopters and emergency sirens. #tornado in Bearegard pic.twitter.com/nWm1bRNeHW
— Scott Fillmer (@scottfillmer) March 3, 2019
Fillmer said he grabbed a chain saw and started cutting trees away until darkness fell in order to clear a path for first responders. He and his wife wanted to try to find other’s nearby and see if they were OK.
“The destruction about 100 yards to our south as the bird flies,” he told Patch. “Was just completely crazy, whole groves of trees completely gone.”
Dozens of buildings were also damaged or destroyed. Fillmer told INSIDER his road now resembles a “ghost town.”
So far, 23 people have died, officials said. Among the dead — three children ages 6, 9 and 10, including the youngest, identified by relatives as Armando “A.J.” Hernandez.
Officials said the county was hit by two tornadoes within an hour of each other. Chris Darden, of the National Weather Service in Birmingham called the Ef-4 a “monster tornado” on Monday.
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