Photo by Kamp Fender.
Volunteers unload bags of pine bark from the bed of a truck while working on the Cahaba Heights Tree Canopy Project, which provided trees to 25 families that were still recovering from the April 2011 tornado.
Trey Miller’s home near Dolly Ridge Drive has lost a lot of trees to tornados and straight-line winds over the years. But the April 2011 tornado took down an estimated 40 treeson his property, he said, leaving hisyard — and most of his neighbors’ yards — bare.
“We were left with absolutely no trees on our property anymore,” Miller said.
It was for the sake of Miller and other Cahaba Heights homeowners like him that a group of Leadership Vestavia Hills participants and members of the Vestavia Hills High School football team were up bright and early Feb. 23 to plant a few new trees to replace those lost in 2011.
This is the second year LVH has organized the Cahaba Heights Tree Canopy Project as one of its class projects. Merryl Cooper, who was part of the 2018 class that planted 14 trees, said reforesting Cahaba Heights is a worthwhile project “because you can just drive down 280 and look over and you can just see where the tornado ripped those trees up,” even eight years after the tornado.
Katherine McRee, who is part of the 2019 LVH class and helped organize the planting, said her own home lost 17 trees and her business, The Lili Pad, had external damage from the tornado. The 2019 class planted 29 trees in Cahaba Heights yards on Feb. 23.
The football team has helped plant the trees both years, and Cooper said “we couldn’t have done it” without their assistance.
The grant money for the planting came from the Jefferson County Community Service Fund.
Leaf & Petal was also a major donor this year, McRee said, as the garden shop provided the saplings at cost. Homeowners got to choose from a few native species that will grow from 6-foot saplings to tall shade trees.
Fig Tree provided breakfast for the planting team, Martin’s Bar-B-Que served lunch and Cahaba Heights Hardware, Standard Heating and Air and the Cahaba Heights Chevron also donated funds or supplies.
Photo by Kamp Fender.
A group of Vestavia Hills High School football players work to plant trees in the yards of Cahaba Heights residents.
“It really turned into a community-building experience for us, but also hopefully for the neighbors,” Cooper said of the first year’s planting.
McRee said she liked “just being a part of the community and being able to give back because several of us were there that day, when it happened.”
According to the National Weather Service, the April 2011 tornado carved a 7.76-mile path through Cahaba Heights and the surrounding areas, reaching a maximum wind speed of 120 miles per hour. It peaked at an EF-2 rating, on a scale of EF-0 to EF-5.
“It’s just a big scar,” Miller said of the remaining damage.
Miller’s own house had to be torn down and rebuilt due to damage, in addition to the “complete wide open space” left in his yard when the trees, many of them older trees of significant size, were damaged. He participated in both the 2018 and 2019 planting days and said he plans to slowly rebuild the tree canopy in his yard.
“I’m going to continue to plant trees as we go through. We’d like to get back to having shade around the house and the property,” Miller said.
McRee said the Tree Canopy Project is likely to continue in the future, either as a Leadership Vestavia project or as a program passed on to another local organization to carry forward.
The 2019 LVH class will present their projects and hold graduation on April 11, 2-7 p.m. at Vestavia Hills City Hall.