I have had a flood of calls and having to only respond to a selected few until things settled down.

First, to my knowledge now, no company lives were lost. Hearing some employees had home damage or lost homes, and everyone knows someone with damage. This morning the Alabama death count at 162 and climbing.

We had 8 or 9 of our stores close and very close to the path of the tornadoes yesterday.

Our Tuscaloosa store had a major hit. The tornado came close to us on our left side of our building and the immediate pressure drop blew out the left side of the building and part of the roof. There may be other structure damage we may discover at our visual inspection today; inventory was tossed around and some just gone. We are meeting our builder this morning at the store to develop a plan on securing/repairing the building.

I want to thank everyone for their prayers and concerns. The whole story will unfold over the next week. It’s hard to imagine how bad this event was, even for us looking at it first hand.
David Henderson

President,

Wittichen Supply Company