Hundreds pour in to help in Vilonia

VILONIA - The sound of chain saws and the plunk of lumber piling up in heaps filled the air on Aspen Creek Drive on Tuesday as National Guard Staff Sgt. Skipper Smith climbed atop a mass of concrete and wood where a house had once stood.

The whir of activity around him stopped as volunteers and tornado survivors watched him unfurl a triangle-folded flag, fasten it atop a metal rod sticking from the debris and secure the makeshift flagpole with a two-by-four.

“This house belonged to one of my soldiers. This hit home. We’re here to help,” Smith said.

Then, applause broke the eerie silence.

This small city in Faulkner County was devastated Sunday night when a tornado estimated to be an EF3 ripped through.

The storm left at least 15 people dead in three counties - 11 of them in Faulkner County - and thousands of homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed.

The city of about 4,000 people swelled Tuesday as more than a thousand volunteers arrived and signed up to help remove debris, hunt for victims’ personal belongings, pick up trash, or deliver supplies and water.

“We were commended by FEMA for how we handled the tornado cleanup three years ago,” said Jim King, a Vilonia city councilman. “I’m confident we can do this.”

On Tuesday morning, King was organizing the stream of volunteers signing up for service assignments at the Beryl Baptist Church. A line of trucks dropped off nonperishable food next to a group offering free chain-saw sharpening.

Water and bananas were carted off quickly on the backs of golf carts and all-terrain vehicles headed out to volunteers.

A road sign a few feet from the church on Main Street boasts that Vilonia was the 2013 Arkansas Volunteer Community of the Year, an award given out by the state Department of Human Services to 12 communities in Arkansas each year.

“I know our people. Everybody steps up and takes care of each other and does whatever they can do,” King said. “We’ve got thousands of people from all over the state and some people coming in from other states. People want to help.”

Volunteers were allowed to enter the city early Tuesday, after a 7 p.m.-7 a.m. curfew imposed by Faulkner County authorities expired.On Monday, authorities had asked all nonemergency personnel to stay out of the city, and posted National Guard members and volunteers from area public safety agencies at most city entrances.

Nonresidents were asked to leave Vilonia by 7 p.m. Monday, and residents with habitable homes were asked to stay inside overnight until 7 a.m. Tuesday. The same curfew was imposed Tuesday night.

Faulkner County spokesman David Hogue said late Tuesday that authorities haven’t had any official reports of looting in either Mayflower or Vilonia. But residents have reported contractors going door-to-door offering their services as “FEMA-approved contractors.”

“There is no such thing as a FEMA-approved contractor,” Hogue said, noting that the county would be requiring contractors to get county-issued permits to work in the damaged areas. That permitting system hadn’t been fully set up as of late afternoon Tuesday.

Also Tuesday, shelters in Mayflower were fully stocked with supplies, but Hogue said shelters in Vilonia still needed donations of food, clothing and toiletries.

RVs with mobile-banking services, cellphone-charging stations, insurance- and disaster-claims help, and hot meals surged into the city, setting up shop along Main Street. Trucks full of volunteers - some as young as 5 years old - followed.

In the Parkwood Meadows subdivision, volunteers from Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints churches in Conway and Cabot salvaged clothes in the still-standing closet of a house on Rush Creek Drive. The rest of the house had collapsed.

One volunteer assured the others that a firefighter had indicated that it was OK to salvage clothes dotted with insulation because the insulation was the “blow-in kind,” not fiberglass. Another woman unhinged the lid of a case to reveal an amber-colored acoustic guitar in perfect shape, saying that the family had been worried about the instrument.

Four family members, including two children, had ridden out the storm in the now-demolished house, a woman who goes to church with the family said. She did not want to give her name Tuesday.

“The mother was in the closet of one of the kids’ rooms with the baby, and they were lifted off the ground. She told us she asked God for some way to save her baby and keep her safe,” the woman said. “A piece of carpet flew into them, and she was able to wrap it around her and the baby and shield them from the wind. It saved them.”

The family and the volunteers also went to church with the Wasson family, which had lived across the street on Aspen Creek Drive. Daniel Wasson, 31, died in the storm Sunday night.

A woman, S. Shepherd, who was helping Wasson’s father look through belongings Tuesday, described what happened to the family Sunday night.

“Dan was holding onto his 5-year-old daughter, and his wife was holding onto their7-year-old daughter in the closet when the storm hit,” Shepherd said.

“He was shielding his little girl from the storm, and he was hit by a beam that came flying in. He gave his life to save her.”

“The others are going to be OK. One of the girls had to have surgery on her shoulder, and his wife is in the hospital in intensive care for awhile with some injuries,” she said. “It’s just heartbreaking. He was such a good father and such a good person. I keep picking up small things thinking maybe they bought this together. Maybe it holds a good memory for the girls.”

James Tkacik lived a few houses away on Clover Ridge Drive. On Tuesday morning, about a half dozen friends and volunteers helped search for his wife’s purse amid the rubble of the house where they had lived for seven years.

Tkacik stood in camouflage pants staring at the pile and running his hand through his hair. He recounted how he, his wife and their two children, ages 12 and 19, crowded into the bathroom with their dog Sunday.

“I was in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that didn’t scare me. But that night, with my kids and my wife under me, I was scared,” he said. “I had one foot against the sink and one foot against the toilet, and the wind started to pick me up. So I just wedged in for dear life and held on.”

Tkacik’s friends salvaged the bathroom door so he can frame and display it in the family’s new house, which he hopes to build somewhere else in town, outside of what he called “tornado alley.”

Down the street, 60-70 volunteers in orange shirts from The Home Depot Foundation descended on the subdivision.

Home Depot Regional Vice President Santiago Bernardez said the company has given grants to the American Red Cross to help pay for recovery efforts and has kept its Conway store open 24 hours a day since the storm. It also stocked up on extra storm-relief supplies like generators and chain saws.

“Giving back to the community, and seeing the look on people’s faces when we can help them find photographs and small mementos, that’s why we do this,” he said. “It’s never a challenge to get people to volunteer. This is what we do.”

A half-mile away, an army of red-shirted residents and volunteers picked up small bits of debris from the playgrounds and fields around the city’s schools, meticulously making their way into downtown Vilonia.

Vilonia Elementary School Principal Kelly Walters led a team of school staff members, students and administrators. She said the roof on the school’s cafeteria was torn off, but the damage was minor compared with the rest of the city.

“We have students who lost parents and students who lost their homes. We have three teachers just at our school who lost their homes,” she said.

“We will get by. The students can eat in the hallways or classrooms. We were lucky compared to how some other parts of town looked. Things were just gone in some places.”

Walters said the school district had recruited more than 300 people to help with the effort.

“We sent an email to the whole district asking people to please come out and help,” she said. “Our new superintendent hasn’t moved down yet from Missouri, but he sent a message to faculty and administrators that was really encouraging. He stressed that we need to step up and be leaders in the community, to put our effort into this for our students, and our families and the community.” Information for this article was contributed by Chad Day of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.