Wanda Hallmark figured she had tornadoes figured out. A Mount Olive resident for more than 40 years, she figured her low-lying residence would be safe from a twister, recalling the tornado that struck hilltop homes in North Smithfield Estates years ago.

But she thinks differently after the storm that struck Mount Olive and other areas last Tuesday.

“I told somebody, we’ll probably never have a tornado down here because we’re kind of in a hole, kind of low,” she said. “I said, we’ll never have one. Well, guess what? I guess the good Lord said, ‘Well, I’ll just show you.’”

The Jefferson County Commission on Tuesday placed an item on the agenda of Thursday’s meeting to approve collection and removal of roadside debris in unincorporated parts of the county affected by the storm.

“We think it was an F1 that lightly touched down,” Commissioner Joe Knight said after the commission’s committee meeting. “It was either a zero or a one. But they had a lot of damage, like in Mount Olive. It was just very specific, a little bit west of that. Some in Fultondale. It seems to always hit around up there. Mostly it was straight-line winds, but I think there was a little bit of a rotation in there.”

Hallmark said she and her husband never heard the storm, as they live in the basement of their home. But their tenant who lives upstairs did, as did her daughter Dana Hallmark Bailey and her husband, Jimmy Bailey, who live across the street.

“It destroyed a lot of stuff,” Jimmy Bailey said. “There was debris down there and you couldn’t get through. The fire department had to cut us a pathway.”

Bailey’s mother-in-law said this was a first-time experience for the area.

“Never, ever, ever, never,” Hallmark said. “Storms. A little bit of wind damage. Limbs off a tree. But never ever anything like this. I hope it doesn’t happen again ever because it could have been a lot worse. We got trees and they couldn’t hit the house or anything so we were blessed in that area.”

A large tree destroyed a shed at the Hallmark house. Across the street, three trees fell at the Bailey residence, taking out some power lines.

Blue tarps were on the roofs of several houses in Mount Olive as tree services cut up damaged trees. Workers from the Jefferson County Roads and Transportation Department already were on hand to haul away debris placed along roadsides.

“What we’re doing is, ‘Look, y’all get it to the road. We’ll pick it up.’ Help them out,” said Knight, who confirmed that help is for affected parts of unincorporated Jefferson County. But, he said, others may need help too.

“If we need to help cities, we’ll help them too,” he said. “Some of them are small cities that haven’t got the wherewithal to go get it (debris). You can’t leave that stuff out there.”

Among other items placed on the agenda for Thursday’s meeting were a pair of allotments of $400,000 apiece in economic development funds for Innovation Depot and the Birmingham Business Alliance. Each allocation, if approved, would aid in the entity’s efforts in workforce development.