Survivors of twister 'moving on'

Year after disaster, some homes rebuilt, towns making plans

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STATON BREIDENTHAL --4/22/15--  Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STATON BREIDENTHAL --4/22/15-- Houses are slowly being rebuilt in the Parkwood Meadows neighborhood of Vilonia after last year's tornado heavily damaged the neighborhood.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STATON BREIDENTHAL --4/22/15-- Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/STATON BREIDENTHAL --4/22/15-- Houses are slowly being rebuilt in the Parkwood Meadows neighborhood of Vilonia after last year's tornado heavily damaged the neighborhood.

Kerry Short didn’t want to talk about it.

She rounded the corner of the cinder-block and steel-beamed shop, folded her arms around herself and gripped tightly. Her jaw set hard, she raised her head higher and pressed her lips resolutely.

“It happened, and now we need to just keep moving on,” the 52-year-old, wearing jeans, a white T-shirt and tennis shoes, said, biting out the words.

Dam Road in Mayflower ends at Short’s shop on the right and her brand-new ranch-style home on the left.

Homes in various stages of reconstruction sit alongside lots left vacant by the violent April 27, 2014, storm system that spawned a tornado that killed 16 Arkansans — 12 from Faulkner County, three in Pulaski County and one in White County.

Today, debris still marks the tornado’s path, but survivors are rebuilding and cities are reimagining themselves.

Nearly all of Dam Road — which lines the shores of Lake Conway — was wiped out in the twister.

“We lost a daughter 10 years ago in a car accident. You just keep moving forward,” Short said. “This was just a house. We didn’t lose any of the important things. The people in our houses are what’s important. Move on, that’s what we need to do.”

After forming and touching down in western Pulaski County, the storm carved a 40-mile path through central Arkansas, taking lives and demolishing neighborhoods and businesses in Pulaski, Faulkner and White counties.

One year later, tornado cliches still litter the scenes — in the sheets of tin wrapped around high tree branches; a lone bathtub standing starkly on the concrete foundation of a family home no longer there; several winters’ worth of logs chopped from the thousands of snapped trees; and abandoned vehicles crumpled like wads of paper.

A brick entryway before Clover Ridge Drive in the hard-hit Vilonia area off Naylor Road gives the appearance of entering a neighborhood. But the new construction stops after four houses — two on each side — then gives way to acres of mostly deserted landscape where the Parkwood Meadows subdivision once stood.

“For Sale By Owner” signs stand in front of the rubble of concrete foundations and downed trees. Copper pipes jut from the ground, leading to nowhere. Mangled mailboxes, some barely dangling from splintered posts, bear names and house numbers.

Hand-painted, brightly colored wooden signs wishing hope and love to the neighborhood are staked where some can’t bear to rebuild.

Emily Byrd, 30, was born and raised on Williams Road, an offshoot of Naylor. She still lives there in a brick home next-door to her brother, Kevin, who is living in a camper while he plans to rebuild.

Their parents wouldn’t stay, however.

“They just didn’t want to go through rebuilding,” Byrd said.

The cost of reconstructing in a flood zone was too much, she added, so they moved away — like so many of their neighbors.

In Mayflower, plastic-covered electrical wires dangle from what remains of a metal building on the north side of Interstate 40. Pieces of a back and side wall are still standing, although the storm gutted and ripped away the rest of the aluminum-sided building. A lone, three-compartment stainless steel sink with barely a scratch is anchored to the vast concrete foundation.

Down the road and a curve to the south is Gibson Bridge Road, a single gravel road just barely within the city limits.

Evidence of the storm remains, even though most of the handful of Mayflower residents who have called the area home for decades promptly purchased new manufactured homes now rimmed with fresh landscaping and wooden decks. The additions sit side by side with land covered in felled trees and piles of debris.

Dick Roy, 74, who lives in a small manufactured home about halfway down Gibson Bridge Road, pointed to a flat tree-stump circle about 4 feet in diameter in his front yard.

“That,” he said, before swinging his arm around behind him to point to the center of his new home, “went through there and destroyed the house totally.”

“The whole neighborhood changed completely in a matter of a minute,” added his wife, Carolyn Roy, 72.

For 84-year-old Jessie Green, leaving the Gibson Bridge Road community was never a consideration. The only part of her home left standing when the storm cleared was the small bedroom closet where she, her daughter, Becky Green, and granddaughter, Tayler Green, took shelter.

“I just kept saying, ‘Lord keep us safe. Lord keep us safe.’ And he did. The next day was my birthday,” Green said, sitting in the living room of a brand-new double-wide manufactured home.

“This neighborhood is our home. I’m not worried; a tornado may never happen here again. I try not to worry about things you can’t do anything about.”

Finances, insurance

One year ago, Josh Hunt, 37, and 11 of his family members and friends kicked out the back wall of his brother’s basement to outrun flames sparked by damage from the tornado’s winds. They thought they were done for, no match for the roaring black mass.

But one year later, Hunt stood on his front lawn on Dam Road in Mayflower behind his brother, Joe, 34, who could only wave his right hand toward where his friends used to live, his left toward where his parents’ house once stood.

His entire support system was wiped out in one fell swoop, and they “didn’t even have a car to sleep in.”

The family is rebuilding, slowly but surely.

Insurance helped.

Many people, especially on Dam Road, rebuilt using insurance proceeds.

While residents in several counties were eligible for federal assistance, most applicants were not approved.

The U.S. Small Business Administration gave out $9.1 million in loans to 114 of 809 homeowners and renters who applied and $2.1 million in loans to 13 of 212 businesses that applied.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency approved only 268 of 1,087 applications for a total $2.7 million in aid — funds that will not have to be paid back.

Eligibility requires disaster survivors to have “necessary expenses or serious needs as a result of the disaster that are not covered by insurance or any other source,” according to a FEMA fact sheet. The damaged home also must be inaccessible or not livable because of the disaster.

FEMA obligated $8 million in public assistance after the disaster as the federal government’s 75 percent share of reimbursement for local governments’ rebuilding costs. Several counties got portions of that aid, with the highest amounts going to Faulkner County government, cities and school districts.

Josh Hunt’s family is renting a house in Maumelle while he rebuilds his home using insurance proceeds, along with a Small Business Administration loan.

The plan was to finish moving in this weekend — 365 days after the storm.

Reimagining life

The aftermath of the storm also brought an opportunity for communities to reinvent themselves.

Vilonia and Mayflower are largely suburbs of the greater Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway metropolitan area. They are small, residential communities not built or planned to compete with larger neighbors.

But the towns are growing, particularly Vilonia.

“People come for the schools,” Vilonia Mayor James Firestone said.

Firestone wants to plan for a sharp increase in population, changing the layout of the town and adding a town square similar to the one at Hendrix Village in Conway.

Devin Howland, a disaster-recovery manager with the Central Arkansas Planning and Development District, is helping to lead the charge.

“These towns don’t have a lot of business,” he said. Residents go elsewhere for a lot of services, meaning the towns don’t capture all of the economic possibilities of the community.

Public and private investment based on new designs could create central business districts encouraging economic growth.

Vilonia’s population of about 4,500 has grown exponentially in recent years and is projected to more than double to 10,000 residents in the next 15 years.

“The Idea of Vilonia,” imagined by University of Arkansas at Fayetteville professors, proposes a walkable town loop with a greenway, town square, farmers market, office space, apartment housing, a main street and a city park.

Safe rooms could be built in the town square and other parts of the city using repurposed shipping containers at a much lower cost than typical storm shelters, Howland said.

Elsewhere, the town could connect its side streets, making travel between neighborhoods more efficient and giving the city a chance to expand to the north and south.

Streets that don’t connect can offer disastrous consequences, Howland explained. If the tornado had blown through during a baseball game off Cemetery Road, Howland said, there would have been a lot more casualties because there’s only one way out.

A JumpStart Vilonia plan, envisioned by Metroplan, suggests more bicycle-friendly streets, zoning, safe rooms and preparedness drills.

In Mayflower, another JumpStart plan recommends a business district, which the city doesn’t currently have, with buildings set right next to streets, public spaces and outdoor seating and dining.

It also recommends safe rooms in new structures and cautions against mobile homes.

Rural west Pulaski County, which suffered damage and the loss of three lives, has had a much different experience in the year since the tornado.

The priorities there are a bit different, said Janice Mann, the recovery coordinator for Interfaith and Partners in Disaster Recovery Alliance. The group is made up of several nonprofit organizations dedicated to rebuilding communities hard-hit by storms.

Mann’s group has mostly worked with volunteer organizations on Mayflower and Vilonia, the two most talked-about areas when it comes to the April 27, 2014, twister.

But recently, the group has reached out to west Pulaski County, chiefly the Paron area, to work with residents who have felt neglected in the recovery efforts.

“Those folks’ needs are a little different compared to what we’re used to working with,” Mann said, noting that the biggest issue in the area is downed timber.

The land near Paron is largely hilly forest, characterized by tall oaks and slopes.

In the past year, it also has been characterized by piles of sharp, cracked tree branches and trunks marring the landscape.

After the storm last year, residents complained about not being able to afford to haul the debris out or even move it to the short-lived collection bins provided by Pulaski County.

“We’re thinking they might get help with controlled burns or heavy equipment,” Mann said. “That has not worked out at this point.”

Rebuilding anyway

The stress of the storm — the weight of financial responsibilities, the heightened fear of severe weather, the emotional turmoil of loss — has taken its toll on survivors.

Jessie Green has had numerous health issues since the storms, and her brother, Joe York, 86, who lives next-door in Mayflower, said he has lost more than 30 pounds “worrying about it all.”

“Neither one of us have been good since then,” York said.

When asked if the aftereffects of the storm still haunt him, Joe Hunt from Mayflower laughed, took a nervous step back then crossed his arms.

He shook his head back and forth, then gave a nod to the sky.

“I have a lot more respect for Mother Nature now,” Joe Hunt said. “But I don’t worry so much because we went through the worst, and we’re OK.”

In spite of the fears and hard times, many people have chosen to create new homes where the storm ripped the old ones away.

Short — who rebuilt both her home and business in Mayflower — said she and her husband, Kevin, considered leaving after the storm.

Their minds were changed, however, when Kevin’s 88-year-old father, Louie Short, who suffered a head injury in the storm, decided to stay.

“As soon as my father-in-law rebuilt, then I knew we would,” Short said. “We have to keep, keeping on. We all have new normals now.”

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