Storm-hit Wynne sizes up its losses

People look through the windows of the storm-damaged Wynne High School on Saturday as cleanup from Friday’s deadly tornado began. More photos at arkansasonline.com/42wynne/. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Staci Vandagriff)
People look through the windows of the storm-damaged Wynne High School on Saturday as cleanup from Friday’s deadly tornado began. More photos at arkansasonline.com/42wynne/. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Staci Vandagriff)

WYNNE — Just outside a metal fence at the Wynne High School football stadium, there is a plaque on display.

The plaque commemorates the “Yellowjacket Pressbox,” constructed in 1985 thanks to contributions from former school lettermen and donors.

Thirty-eight years later, the “Yellowjacket Pressbox” was one of the many structures destroyed by a tornado that ripped through the town of roughly 8,000 people at 4:30 p.m. Friday, killing four of them.

Saturday morning, the town was cleaning up from the storm under clear, blue skies.

Across the street from the stadium, where the scoreboard was shredded and most of the field is now missing, multiple strips of metal hung from the town’s white water tower.

Wind caused the strips to occasionally shift, creating a clanging sound that added to the day’s eerie atmosphere.

Not far from the tower, Rebecca Strasser helped a group recover items from one roofless home surrounded by debris and fallen trees.

“I don’t know how even to say what’s worse,” Strasser said, when asked to compare the scene around her with the rest of the town’s affected areas.

Standing on a trailer where recovered items were being placed, Strasser recalled the scene less than 24 hours before.

The town’s schools had let out early, and “we were all home and just waiting and watching.

“So many times you hear there’s a tornado likelihood, then this time it was a big deal,” Strasser said. “I could see that twister out my window …. just like on ‘The Wizard of Oz.’”

Strasser was fortunate. She only lost power, and the most damage in her neighborhood was some missing shingles.

She had never been that close to a tornado.

“I don’t want to be that close again,” Strasser said while looking off toward the school, her last words filled with emotion.

Friday’s experience was also a new one for Chalet McDaniel.

“I had never been through a tornado in my 50 years on this earth,” McDaniel said.

Across town from the high school, McDaniel was standing outside her home at the corner of Wilson Street and East Cogbill Avenue, talking to her sister, when the tornado sirens started going off.

She looked across the railroad tracks toward Wynne’s historic downtown and saw the funnel bearing down.

“It happened so fast,” McDaniel recalled. “[First] it was just rain. It got quiet … It got still. And next thing I know everything just started flying.”

McDaniel said she wasn’t scared.

“I was just standing in the bathroom praying,” McDaniel said. “My kids went in the tub. My momma was in the closet, and I was just standing in the middle of the floor in the bathroom just praying. That’s it. That’s all I can do.”

Though it was directly in the twister’s path, her house came away almost unscathed, with minor damage to the roof, windows and the pillars on her porch.

The view down the street on either side of her house showed a different story.

To the left, down Wilson, one home was missing its roof.

To the right, on Cogbill, the two homes behind McDaniel’s each had a tree lying against them, and a telephone pole dangled in the middle of the street. Disaster relief teams from the Southern Baptist Convention were at work trying to clean up the damage.

Across the tracks, the Christian Fellowship Church was surrounded by a ring of bricks that were essentially shaved off its roof.

“I’m blessed,” McDaniel said. “That’s all I can say, is I’m blessed.”

Soon, McDaniel’s family would be visited by a two-person team from the World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit devoted to distributing meals in the wake of natural disasters.

Their SUV full of food purchased from Kroger, Hannah Humphrey and Charlie Shed had made their way overnight to Wynne from Mississippi, where they’d been helping in the wake of tornadoes that struck there a week earlier.

“Coming in here today, we’re seeing people still searching for people and their animals and stuff,” Humphrey said. “So it’s a bit more heavy” than what the relief workers experienced in Mississippi.

Saturday morning, St. Bernards CrossRidge reported it had received a total of 28 patients seeking medical assistance in the wake of the Wynne tornado, most experiencing minor injuries.

ARcare, the community health center with clinics around the state, had a mobile health unit set up at the Odell McCallum Community Center.

The unit, which had seen roughly two dozen patients by early afternoon, was overseen by ARcare’s chief operating officer, Chris Gibson.

“I think the biggest need right now has been people that have lost their meds and don’t have oxygen supply,” Gibson said. “Most of them are just elderly people, they just have been through a lot or need a good physical checkup.”

Gibson plans to keep the mobile unit there for two weeks.

Nearby was Jeremy Bailey, the director of the community center. He was leading an effort to distribute food and water to residents who stopped by.

“It’s been pretty hectic,” Bailey said. “But we’ve been able to be a big blessing to the community and helping a lot of people.”

He estimated about 100 residents had visited the center.

“They come up here with bad spirits, they leave with good spirits,” Bailey said.

After a day spent surveying the damage and meeting with the town’s residents, Mayor Jennifer Hobbs called the experience “heartbreaking,” but said the town would “come out stronger and better than we were.”

In her second term as mayor, this is Hobbs’ first time leading a response to a natural disaster.

Hobbs said the search and rescue phase was completed by 4 p.m. Saturday.

“There were a number of areas that were checked two and three times once the dogs got here, and they were able to go back through the debris,” Hobbs said. “We have a number of locations that there were houses there yesterday, but there is nothing but a pile of rubble today. … We needed to check and recheck to make sure that we didn’t have anyone trapped in that debris.”

With a major amount of damage done to Wynne’s high school, Hobbs said Kenneth Moore, the superintendent, and his team had met with the Department of Education on Saturday, “and they are trying to get a plan in place so that they can find a classroom space for every student.”

Hobbs admitted she “didn’t get much rest last night, and I’m really am tired tonight. We were blessed with sunshine today and a lot of effort, progress was made. So we’ll get out tomorrow and start again.”

Hobbs said the town was “grateful” and “overwhelmed” by the amount of support it had received in the first 24 hours after the tornado.

“[I] just ask that people don’t forget us,” Hobbs said. “Because in the coming days, we’re gonna need that ongoing support to help these families get cleaned up and get them… ready to rebuild.”


 Gallery: Wynne Tornado



  photo  A woman walks past a business Saturday in Wynne that was destroyed in the tornado. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Staci Vandagriff)
 
 


  photo  Omar Hezam looks through what’s left of his father’s Star 2 convenience store Saturday in Wynne. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Staci Vandagriff)
 
 


  photo  A man clears tree limbs off the roof of a home Saturday in Wynne. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Staci Vandagriff)
 
 


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