Nearly everyone at the ceremony in the heart of Clermont recalled where they were and what they saw and heard early on March 20, 1998.
The monument erected near Clermont City Hall bears the names of all 13 people who died that day, five of them around Clermont, according to events coordinator Emily Harper, who remembered the damage and death.
"On the bottom of the monument it says 'to live in one's heart is to truly never die'," she said. "The town just felt that we needed to have the ceremony so they would not be forgotten."
Thirteen white ribbon bows for each tornado victim were placed on the fence surrounding the memorial in Clay E. Gailey Park for the ceremony.
Harper said the deadly twister hit at 6:30 in the morning.
"I can't imagine anything as bad as that," she recalled. "You think that you're safe."
According to news reports, shortly after the tornado struck, there was a thunderstorm warning but not tornado warning from the National Weather Service.
Hall County Commissioner Steve Gailey, who also lives in Clermont, was serving on the city council then and said the storm passed close to his house.
"It was pitch black and it really did sound like a freight train coming through," he recalled.
Gailey said the county's emergency response improved because of the tragedy.
"I think with what we've done in the last eight years, we are so much further along with shelters and our big command center in Gainesville; we hope we never have to have it but I think we have everything there if something like this happens again," Gailey said.
Gailey said sirens would go off and Doppler radar is there to do a much better job of spotting dangerous storms in time.
"There is a siren around the church that alerts this area, there's one at Wauka Mountain Elementary School and North Hall High School and most all the schools have one and they're scattered through out the county," Gailey said.
That morning Lanier Elementary School and North Hall High sustained heavy damage.
During the ceremony Gailey said Clermont has a special relationship with Enterprise, Ala. and Americus, Ga., where tornados struck and killed recently; he asked for a prayer for the people in those towns.
Pastor Allen Morris of Concord Baptist Church in Clermont conducted the service and said the disaster reminded everyone of their mortality.
Seth Weaver, now a Clermont city councilman, was a student at North Hall High the day of the storm but had not left for school yet.
He remembers letting neighbors who lived in a nearby mobile home come into his house as the storm approached and everyone went into the basement.
"We didn't know how bad it was until all the power was out and we heard the sirens," Weaver said. "These people lost their lives unexpectedly to an act of Mother Nature and they need to be remembered."
http://accesswdun.com/article/2007/3/92800