ENGLISH     NYT1114GtornadoG
   Tornado Rips Tradition From a Town
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN


CARBON HILL, Ala., Nov. 12 ? For people here, schools are not just buildings that can be rebuilt bigger and better. They are singular places, 
of community tradition, memory and pride.

That is why it was so devastating this summer when Carbon Hill High School burned to the ground. That is why, five months later, teachers, 
parents and children feel about as uprooted as downed trees after a tornado on Sunday ripped apart the city's only other school, Carbon Hill Elementary.

It was not the fanciest building in town. In some ways, the aging brick campus on top of the hill looked kind of sad. "But I hear it every day, 
`It was where I went and my daddy went and my daddy before that,' " said the school superintendent, Alan Trotter. "Already I'm getting pressure to
 rebuild the elementary exactly where it was. If we don't, all hell will break loose."

No power. No phones. No heat. These are practical worries in a post-tornado town. But as residents in Carbon Hill, a poor mining enclave in northwest
 Alabama, begin the slow crawl back to normalcy, it is the loss of institutions, like churches and schools, that is truly overwhelming.

Even the students, who should be ruling the streets thanks to the sudden godsend of a week off, seemed upset.

"It's good we don't have to go to school," said a seventh grader, Craig Tyndall. "But it's bad because we don't have a school."

He spent the day drifting around with a band of unwashed boys (many homes are without water), watching new power poles get planted in the ground.

The streets here smelled like fresh pine from all the giant trees split by the wind. Starting at daybreak, men in beat-up tractors came steaming in from 
the farmlands, volunteering to help. With cigarettes hanging out of their mouths they cut up tree limbs and dragged them away.

Around lunch, several women arrived in town with plastic bowls of food covered in sweating Saran Wrap. Others cooked beef stew at a Red Cross
 shelter.

According to Mayor James Richardson, half the homes in Carbon Hill were damaged by the tornados that swarmed the area on Sunday night. 
Ten people in surrounding Walker County were killed, most of them by falling trees. More than 50 people were injured.

But, looking ahead, it is the public schools, the mayor said, that pose the biggest problem.

"Kids got to be in class," Mr. Richardson said. "And it's like a bad omen. Losing both of our schools in one year? How are we supposed to 
handle that?"

In Carbon Hill, population 2,100, more than 60 percent of the students are on subsidized lunches. Many fathers are out-of-work coal miners, 
anchorless after the mines that gave Carbon Hill its name dried up. The city budget is around $2 million a year, less than half the cost of a new 
elementary school.

But the gritty economic situation is also a reason people here are so attached to their schools. College is not on everyone's radar screen. 
Many people who are born here stay here. In this self-contained world, the memories from the good ol' days are deposited just down the street.

"Oh, buddy, high school," said Tabitha Keene, a nursing student who used to go to Carbon Hill High. "If only these walls could talk. 
Maybe it's good they're not standing anymore."

This summer the first blow came.

It was June 27, around 9 p.m., when the high school burst into flames.

The cause was an electrical fire. The school, built in 1936, was destroyed.

Since then, the 330 high school students have been shoehorned into 18 aluminum trailers. For lunch they ate next door at the elementary school, 
which actually is K through 8, though everybody still calls it "the elementary."

But that all changed Sunday night. At 7:18 p.m. ? the yellowed wall clocks are frozen on the minute ? a tornado packing winds of 200 miles 
an hour arrived at the school with a vengeance. It sucked the roof away. It toppled brick walls. It grabbed gravel from the playground and hurled 
it through the school's windows, leaving so many neat little holes it looks as if someone peppered the school with a machine gun.

"It's a total loss," said Mr. Trotter, as he surveyed the 40-year-old school today. "We'll salvage what we can. We'll bulldoze the rest."

Mr. Trotter said that a few months ago when he suggested finding a new location for the high school, he received "a whole bunch of angry letters."

"Everybody in this community really identifies with these schools," Mr. Trotter said. "They are hubs. People don't want them to change."

The other hubs in the community are the numerous churches that dot the hillsides. Many were heavily damaged, including a rural Baptist church 
that was leveled and the oldest black church in the county, which now has an oak tree on its roof.

This evening, officials decided the only solution to the school problem was to have both the high schoolers and the 540 elementary students share 
the portable classrooms, at least until more trailers can be found. The younger students will go to school in the morning; the older ones will come 
in the afternoon. One idea for subsidized meals was giving the younger kids a sack lunch to eat on the bus ride home.

"It's been an unbelievable year," said the Walker County chairman, Bruce Hamrick.

As night fell on Carbon Hill, candles flickered in many windows. With more than 100 utility poles down, electricity is not expected back on for 
another week.

Without TV or video games, teenagers had little to do but stand in sweatshirts outside of cold homes and talk in the darkness.

One thing was kind of nice, though. The smell of wood-burning fires. If Carbon Hill has anything these days, it is plenty of freshly sawed firewood.