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Straight Line Winds, Not A Tornado, Destroyed Mobile Homes, Injured 10, NWS Says
March 20, 2022
Straight line winds, not a tornado, were responsible for the injuries and damage at a mobile home park north of Atmore Friday morning, according to the National Weather Service in Mobile.
A team from NWS surveyed the damage Saturday morning, determining that “a swath of damaging straight line winds impacted the Poarch, AL, area,” about 9:04 a.m.
A total of 10 people were injured, two critically, at the Big Oak Mobile Home Park at 7400 Jack Springs Road, just north of the Poarch Creek Indian Reservation. There were no fatalities.
At least nine mobile homes were completely destroyed, and other structures in the area were damaging, including structures at Perdido River Farms, a tribe-owned beef farm.
“A narrow swath of intense wind gusts estimated at 90 to 100mph affected a mobile home park where several mobile homes were rolled/destroyed. The surrounding area sustained severe wind gusts to the southeast where several trees were snapped/uprooted and a farm and nearby residences sustained roof damage to several buildings. The survey team found no evidence of convergence with all damage laid out in a southwest to northeast swath suggesting straight line wind damage,” the NWS report states.
“It’s devastating. Those people have nothing left,” Escambia County (AL) Sheriff Heath Jackson said. “We are so thankful that no one was killed or severely injured, but to know everything that you owned is no more. That’s difficult to see.”
“It looked like a bomb hit some of them,” Atmore Fire Chief Ronald Peebles told NorthEscambia.com on Friday.
Several of the homes were blown from their foundations and scattered about the mobile home park. First responders from Poarch Creek, Escambia County, Alabama, Baldwin County and the state combed through the wreckage looking for anyone injured or trapped.
“We have one guy that was in his mobile home when the storm hit. He was asleep. He said when he woke up, he was in the woods,” Jackson said. “Obviously the Good Lord was looking out for him.”
Escambia County (AL) Emergency Management Director David Adams said Friday that while there were indications of some rotation in the damage, it appeared straight line winds were the likely cause.
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