CONWAY — Jennifer Shaw-Parker of Conway and her family have been living in hotel rooms since the area’s April 27 tornado destroyed their mobile home.
“This is too expensive,” she said. “It was a long summer. My kids are not city kids, and this is making us all a little crazy.”
This is the second time the family’s home has been destroyed. They lost everything in the 2011 tornado that hit Vilonia, too.
“We got back on our feet, and another trailer went in,” she said.
After the 2011 deadly storm, she and her husband, James, installed a storm cellar on the property in the Black Oak Ranch Estates near Vilonia.
The 33-year-old said she and her husband were making payments on the land to buy it.
When the storm was eminent in April, she took her boys and three of their dogs and got in the cellar. They had just left her husband, who was working at his tire store in Conway.
“The streets were flooding; we drove home in this flooding-down rain,” she said. “They were on the weather [report] saying it was coming. They said, ‘You have 10 minutes to get to cover.’”
She put her sons in the storm cellar and ran back into the mobile home, trying to grab important items.
“My file folder with my important information went flying,” she said.
Shaw-Parker said she yelled at neighborhood teenagers to get in the cellar, too, but they were taking pictures.
She and her sons sat on the cellar floor, and their dogs climbed into her lap as the storm raged outside.
“It was horrible. I never heard anything like that in my life,” she said of the tornado’s roar.
“I don’t get scared — I was screaming, and you could hear [the tornado] over me,” she said.
“I remember saying, ‘We’re going to be OK,” because I knew we were going to be in that concrete cellar.”
Shaw-Parker said she didn’t come out until she heard people talking outside.
In the first tornado, all that was left of their trailer was the floor. This mobile home was bolted to the ground. After the April 27 tornado tore through the area, “the only thing left was the straight piece of I-beam.”
“I think I said, ‘Oh, not again — you’ve got to be kidding me,’” she said.
The first time, the couple had insurance, but not this time.
“It’s complicated. We don’t make very much money, either,” Shaw-Parker said.
After the 2011 tornado, they replaced their barn
and fence.
“The state helped me put in the fence because we lost it to a natural disaster. That program doesn’t even exist anymore,” she said.
Martha Martin, chairwoman of the Vilonia Disaster Recovery Alliance board, said she doesn’t know the details of Shaw-Parker’s personal situation, but “she would probably be an example of the type of people we work with.”
“They may be disabled, their children may have medical problems, or divorce, or blended families — everybody’s got a story and mostly good, legit stories,” Martin said.
She said that after the 2011 tornado, some people whose homes were destroyed went into debt.
“What if you already had an SBA (Small Business Administration) loan from 2011, and now you need it again?” Martin said. “What are you going to do?”
“It’s either buy medicine or buy house insurance. We want to try to find them the resources to get out of that hole they’re in — that constant robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
Because the subdivision in which Shaw-Parker lived is in the Vilonia School District, “they’re enveloped in our recovery area,” Martin said.
People have asked Shaw-Parker why the family doesn’t put another mobile home on that property, but she said the pasture is full of glass, and she doesn’t want to take a chance on being hit a third time.
A nonprofit organization paid for a hotel room for the family after April’s tornado.
In the first hotel, she found marijuana in a drawer. She knew the room wasn’t being cleaned well, and the family moved.
In the second hotel, bugs were coming out of the TV, she said.
Shaw-Parker doesn’t blame the hotel management.
“There were so many survivors trying to live there, and they’re bringing food,” she said.
She and her family are now living in a third hotel, and she hopes to move out this week.
“We’re trying to pay for this hotel and to keep things normal,” she said.
Besides the cost, $57 a night, plus tax, she said two things bother her most about living in a hotel: “One, I can’t ground [my sons],” she said, laughing. “Two, I can’t cook anything. I really, really miss the stove. My husband likes my beans and cornbread. I’ve never considered myself a big cook, but I miss having the ability to cook for myself when I want to.”
It’s also hard to take care of her horse, Foxxy, which was one of two that were injured in the tornado. Both underwent surgery, she said, and one later had to be put down when it fell over a fence somehow.
Federal Emergency Management Agency representatives and others have suggested that she get rid of her horse, but Shaw-Parker said it’s part of her family.
“I guess it’s like a dog. You know when you adopt a dog, and they tell you this is a lifetime commitment? I wouldn’t just sell her; she’s as kooky as I am,” Shaw-Parker said. “They’re my responsibility.”
She said FEMA representatives don’t understand why she won’t live in an apartment, either.
“We’re farm people,” she said.
Shaw-Parker said she has found a mobile home and 2 acres to rent.
“A lot of people have stepped forward and helped us, which is awesome,” she said.
“Thank goodness for the donations we got. I got a little truck and some insurance on it.”
What she needs the most, she said, is land.
“If we could have somewhere to just start, just a piece of one, even 10 acres,” she said. “I’ve got to find a farmhouse I can rent, not a mobile home.”
She thinks the walk-in centers that World Renew will staff for two weeks in Vilonia and Mayflower to help tornado victims are a great idea.
Shaw-Parker said she knows what it’s like to struggle to recover after a tornado, but she’s optimistic.
“Things are going to get better,” she said.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.