When a tornado hit the Tom Bevill Public Library in Colony, Alabama, April 16, it struck 50 minutes after the building had closed for the night. "On the outside it looked like we had lost everything," said Max Hand, assistant director of the Cullman County Library system.
The branch serves a predominately African-American population in a town of 333, some 45 miles north of Birmingham.
"Though the roof was torn off, as well as light fixtures and ceiling tiles, the shell of the building held up," Hand reported. County Librarian John Myrick and a group of library workers were able to salvage nearly half of the collection, about 750 books, and begin drying them out the day after the storm.
Hand said the branch had lost its large-print volumes and almost all of the children's picture books.
Posted April 27, 1998.