Bent, Not Broken

The twisted steel beam in front of you is a survivor. On April twenty-seventh, two thousand eleven, an EF four tornado tore across northern Alabama on a path of nearly forty-seven miles. At about two forty in the afternoon it entered downtown Cullman, broadcast live on local television as it came. Well built brick storefronts that had stood for generations were heavily damaged or flattened. In all, the storm damaged or destroyed more than eight hundred sixty homes and nearly a hundred businesses here, and across its full track it killed six people and injured dozens.

This monument was built from a single bent I beam salvaged from a downtown building the tornado demolished. The city dedicated it in two thousand thirteen and gave it the name Bent, Not Broken, a tribute to a county that buckled under the storm but refused to come apart.