Tornado Hits Jacksonville State Marching Southern's Building

[Mandolin Picker]

Here in east-central Alabama we have had some heavy weather just go through, and a pretty powerful tornado seems to have targeted Jacksonville State University (about 20 minutes north of the house). Jacksonville State is known for its music program and their marching band, "The Marching Southerners." Lot's of music teachers come out of this university, including my granddaughter's flute teacher when we lived back in Maryland.

 

Based on some tweets coming out of Jacksonville, the building the band was located in took damage to the roof and there is pretty good water damage inside the building. It will probably be morning before we get a good look at the damage to all of the Jacksonville area. Fortunately most kids are off campus this week due to spring break, and while we have been hearing of some injuries, no reported deaths.

 

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Just found this pic of the inside of Mason Hall which is where the music program is located

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[Phil O'Keefe]

I'm sorry to hear that some people were injured.

 

Any word on whether any instruments were damaged?

[Mandolin Picker]

I'm sorry to hear that some people were injured.

 

Any word on whether any instruments were damaged?

 

Nothing yet that we have heard. They have a really big mess up there. The coliseum is severely damaged as are quite a few of the main buildings on campus. The campus really took a direct hit.

 

Also a lot of the apartments around the campus are not just missing roofs, but entire floors. Its gonna take a few days just to sort everything out. They are not expecting power to be back on to everyone until well into next week. So many power poles snapped like twigs that have to be replaced.

[Phil O'Keefe]

Sounds like the whole area is just devastated...