RALEIGH, N.C. — In April 2011, a tornado ripped through central North Carolina. 

Jerome Waller, who currently lives in Graham, lived through it, and says he was sitting inside Tupper Memorial Baptist Church for his daughter’s choir concert when it hit. 

The beautiful sounds inside were quickly interrupted by the severe weather outside. 

“We just heard all this noise and it was like a train kind of,” Waller recalls. “You come back out and it’s like branches and limbs, and just stuff all everywhere. The wind was still blowing, the sky looked terrible. It was like, 'hey, we gotta get out of Raleigh.'”

His family was living in Durham at the time and, in the days that followed, watched the aftermath of the storm in Raleigh in disbelief.

It’s an experience that taught his family to always pay close attention when potentially dangerous weather is in the forecast. 

“Before that, me and the family had gone through Fran," Waller says. "We went through the ice storm of whenever it was, so anytime we hear hurricane, tornado, it’s like is it a watch or is it a warning? You know, you prepare and you just be on your guard.”