“It’s just God,” Cook told CNN on Friday.
Cook and her husband escaped the tornado in a closet at their two-story home in Birmingham’s Eagle Point neighborhood. They could see the storm clouds overhead when the roof gave way.
Cook said that after the storm passed, she wanted to save as many photos as she could of her damaged home.
Later, she realized that the cross was still in her yard and the purple cloth had not spread.
“It is still there and my cross is still there because God was with all these people, and with us,” said Cook.
She plans to replace the cloth with a white one on Easter Sunday.
“That’s what God is all about,” said Cook, pointing to the cross. “Lent is a painful time, but on that Easter Sunday, everything will be beautiful again.”
The National Weather Service said 23 tornadoes formed across the Southeast on Thursday through Friday morning – one in Mississippi; 17 in Alabama; and five in Georgia.
Tornadoes killed at least five people in Calhoun County, Alabama, and one person in Coweta County, Georgia, which is south of Atlanta.
A tornado did major damage to Cook’s neighborhood, smashing trees and reducing brick-walled houses to piles of rubble.
“Tornadoes are known to indiscriminately damage some houses and properties and not others,” said CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam. “In this case, it looks like the tornado rose and fell several times before leaving the cross and handkerchief in place, but destroying the roof of the next house.”
The hum of chainsaws can be heard in the neighborhood on Friday, as people worked to clean up the debris and spread blue tarps over the damaged houses.