Those are the questions Henri Cheramie found himself asking the first responders who came to his aid on May 4.
It must have been an odd sight to anyone, a man half standing, half sitting with his head and shoulders out of the sunroof of his 1990 two-door Honda Civic and the rest of the car around his waist pinned there by the limbs of an oak tree, felled by severe storms passing across the state that day.
Cheramie, an experienced stand-up comedian turned middle school history teacher and part-time comic book shop employee, found himself wanting to comfort the first responders. After all, he couldn't do much to help himself, so why not bring a little levity to the moment?
He received much of the same in the way of answers to his quips. Several people offered "I don't know" or a simple "maybe," Cheramie said, but most just kept calling him 'the luckiest man alive."
It took about two hours of strategic limb and car cutting to free him that night.
Face-to-face with danger
Cheramie has a habit of being disaster adjacent.
A Louisiana native who spent a significant portion of his young life in New Orleans, Cheramie just missed the wrath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He'd fled the city several hours before it got too dangerous to do so.
He felt guilt for that for a long time, he said.
Then he lived in Tuscaloosa. He moved away three days before a monster tornado swept through Alabama on April 27, 2011.
"It's a weird thing," Cheramie said about this unknowing ability to avoid danger. But after 37 years, he'd finally come face-to-face with disaster.
The May 4 storms initially brought with them a lot of rain. Birmingham and areas north began flooding. Roadways were shutdown, homes were inundated and water rescues began. The storms encouraged instability increasing the severe weather threat for central Alabama, according to the National Weather Service.
"An intense cluster of thunderstorms formed in Mississippi and congealed into a line, which then swept across counties south of Interstate 20 where conditions were most favorable for severe storms," according to the NWS report from that day.
Three tornadoes would be recorded that day, including an EF-1 that struck portions of Prattville and Millbrook.
Wind gusts of near 60 mph were recorded at the Montgomery Airport. Straight line winds and lightening accompanied the rain as it moved into the River Region around 6 p.m. That's where Cheramie met the storm.
'Mondayest Tuesday ever' Cheramie had finished a shift at Comics and Geeks, a job he'd been offered just a week before, and was on his way to his Old Selma Road home when he took his normal shortcut through some residential neighborhoods west of Maxwell Air Force Base.
"I see lightning just arc across the sky and hit a tree," he said. "I lean a bit and go 'did lightning just strike that' and the next thing I know, half of my body is out of the sunroof and the top of the car is being weighed down by a giant branch that is bisected just where my face is. I felt like Buster Keaton."
Cheramie paused for a second to take stock of the situation, he said.
"And my first thought was 'is this a Monday or a Tuesday because this is the Mondayest Tuesday ever'," he said.
He reached to turn the car off and put it in park. He assumed someone must have heard or seen what had just happened. But then lightning struck twice.
"Behind me, a powerline decides to explode," he said. "When that happened, electricity just sparked and everything lit up and I heard the power line pop and that's when I started yelling for help. I didn't want to die."
A crew of landscapers who'd been nearby came upon the scene and first tried to get him out. One called 911.
When first responders began arriving, the reaction, Cheramie said, seemed to be the same from them all — wide eyes, agape mouths and questions about the status of his mortality.
"If my giant C-section baby head hadn't gone through that sunroof, I don't know where I'd be," he joked.
Firefighters gave Cheramie a helmet, some goggles and threw a tarp over him as they strategically strapped the limbs to his car to avoid rollback, cut it up, then cut the Honda in pieces to remove him.
High on adrenaline and shock, Cheramie declined an ambulance ride. He didn't feel too bad, and there were minimal cuts and bruises.
"New Orleans, baby," he said when he explained away the decision to not seek further medical attention.
As an officer drove him the last three miles to his house, Cheramie was struck by how dark it was. No streetlights, no homes lit up for dinnertime.
"It dawned on me that the lightning strike that almost took me out, probably caused this too," he said.
'I'm alive' Is Cheramie the luckiest man alive? Maybe, but it's hard to dispute how unlikely it is that he'd come close to impending doom at least three times and walk away from it.
In the days since, his body has tightened up.
"It's my neck mostly that's giving me trouble," he said. "I feel like I have to Batman it, you know when Michael Keaton would turn all stiff without turning his head."
'A lot to be grateful for':Lives spared as homes, businesses peeled apart by Alabama tornadoes
He's cried about it, but mostly he's learned that it's OK to not be in control. He's learned to be patient with himself, and to worry only about what's happening in the now and not what may happen in the future.
For someone who hates asking for help, Cheramie said a switch flipped in his brain.
"I would have expected to be freaking out, inwardly and outwardly," he said. "Instead, my brain was like 'we're just going to sit here calmly. There's nothing I can do to help myself so I have to let these people help me.' "
Along with the car, he lost his cellphone, laptop, several comic book issues of "Checkmate" and "War of the Green Lanterns."
Ksrugi on May 17th, 2021 at 04:33 UTC »
https://www.beauregarddailynews.net/story/news/2021/05/12/alabama-storms-montgomery-man-survives-tree-crushing-car/4969684001/
Will insurance cover this?
Can this be buffed out?
Would this tree make good firewood?
Those are the questions Henri Cheramie found himself asking the first responders who came to his aid on May 4.
It must have been an odd sight to anyone, a man half standing, half sitting with his head and shoulders out of the sunroof of his 1990 two-door Honda Civic and the rest of the car around his waist pinned there by the limbs of an oak tree, felled by severe storms passing across the state that day.
Cheramie, an experienced stand-up comedian turned middle school history teacher and part-time comic book shop employee, found himself wanting to comfort the first responders. After all, he couldn't do much to help himself, so why not bring a little levity to the moment?
He received much of the same in the way of answers to his quips. Several people offered "I don't know" or a simple "maybe," Cheramie said, but most just kept calling him 'the luckiest man alive."
It took about two hours of strategic limb and car cutting to free him that night.
Face-to-face with danger
Cheramie has a habit of being disaster adjacent.
A Louisiana native who spent a significant portion of his young life in New Orleans, Cheramie just missed the wrath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He'd fled the city several hours before it got too dangerous to do so.
He felt guilt for that for a long time, he said.
Then he lived in Tuscaloosa. He moved away three days before a monster tornado swept through Alabama on April 27, 2011.
"It's a weird thing," Cheramie said about this unknowing ability to avoid danger. But after 37 years, he'd finally come face-to-face with disaster.
The May 4 storms initially brought with them a lot of rain. Birmingham and areas north began flooding. Roadways were shutdown, homes were inundated and water rescues began. The storms encouraged instability increasing the severe weather threat for central Alabama, according to the National Weather Service.
"An intense cluster of thunderstorms formed in Mississippi and congealed into a line, which then swept across counties south of Interstate 20 where conditions were most favorable for severe storms," according to the NWS report from that day.
Three tornadoes would be recorded that day, including an EF-1 that struck portions of Prattville and Millbrook.
Wind gusts of near 60 mph were recorded at the Montgomery Airport. Straight line winds and lightening accompanied the rain as it moved into the River Region around 6 p.m. That's where Cheramie met the storm.
'Mondayest Tuesday ever' Cheramie had finished a shift at Comics and Geeks, a job he'd been offered just a week before, and was on his way to his Old Selma Road home when he took his normal shortcut through some residential neighborhoods west of Maxwell Air Force Base.
"I see lightning just arc across the sky and hit a tree," he said. "I lean a bit and go 'did lightning just strike that' and the next thing I know, half of my body is out of the sunroof and the top of the car is being weighed down by a giant branch that is bisected just where my face is. I felt like Buster Keaton."
Cheramie paused for a second to take stock of the situation, he said.
"And my first thought was 'is this a Monday or a Tuesday because this is the Mondayest Tuesday ever'," he said.
He reached to turn the car off and put it in park. He assumed someone must have heard or seen what had just happened. But then lightning struck twice.
"Behind me, a powerline decides to explode," he said. "When that happened, electricity just sparked and everything lit up and I heard the power line pop and that's when I started yelling for help. I didn't want to die."
A crew of landscapers who'd been nearby came upon the scene and first tried to get him out. One called 911.
When first responders began arriving, the reaction, Cheramie said, seemed to be the same from them all — wide eyes, agape mouths and questions about the status of his mortality.
"If my giant C-section baby head hadn't gone through that sunroof, I don't know where I'd be," he joked.
Firefighters gave Cheramie a helmet, some goggles and threw a tarp over him as they strategically strapped the limbs to his car to avoid rollback, cut it up, then cut the Honda in pieces to remove him.
High on adrenaline and shock, Cheramie declined an ambulance ride. He didn't feel too bad, and there were minimal cuts and bruises.
"New Orleans, baby," he said when he explained away the decision to not seek further medical attention.
As an officer drove him the last three miles to his house, Cheramie was struck by how dark it was. No streetlights, no homes lit up for dinnertime.
"It dawned on me that the lightning strike that almost took me out, probably caused this too," he said.
'I'm alive' Is Cheramie the luckiest man alive? Maybe, but it's hard to dispute how unlikely it is that he'd come close to impending doom at least three times and walk away from it.
In the days since, his body has tightened up.
"It's my neck mostly that's giving me trouble," he said. "I feel like I have to Batman it, you know when Michael Keaton would turn all stiff without turning his head."
'A lot to be grateful for':Lives spared as homes, businesses peeled apart by Alabama tornadoes
He's cried about it, but mostly he's learned that it's OK to not be in control. He's learned to be patient with himself, and to worry only about what's happening in the now and not what may happen in the future.
For someone who hates asking for help, Cheramie said a switch flipped in his brain.
"I would have expected to be freaking out, inwardly and outwardly," he said. "Instead, my brain was like 'we're just going to sit here calmly. There's nothing I can do to help myself so I have to let these people help me.' "
Along with the car, he lost his cellphone, laptop, several comic book issues of "Checkmate" and "War of the Green Lanterns."
But all of that can be replaced.
"I'm alive," he said. "And that's what matters."
pyrothelostone on May 17th, 2021 at 04:50 UTC »
"Narrowly" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here lol God damn miracle is what that is.
Shughost7 on May 17th, 2021 at 04:59 UTC »
Boss: "You're still coming to work right?"