BREAKING NEWS - SPECIAL ONLINE UPDATE

Families, friends, strangers help in recovery

By KIP BURKE,  news editor

            “I’m overwhelmed at how many people have come to help us,” Paula Denard remarked

Scores of people turned out to help with cleanup efforts all across the county.

Thursday, clutching a handful of family photos she’d found in the rubble of her family’s home. “They were here at first light, some people I didn’t even know, to help us find things and clean up.”

            Clean-up and recovery are continuing Friday after an F4 tornado cut across Wilkes County Wednesday night leaving one home destroyed and others damaged.

            The suspected tornado cut a path from the Tyrone community, through Lundberg, Aonia, and Holliday Park leaving a trail of damaged buildings and trees. Worst hit was the Stony Ridge Road home of Doug and Paula Denard which was totally destroyed while they took shelter in a basement crawlspace with their children, Logan, 12, and Emily, 5.

            “I wasn’t entirely sure we needed to get under the house,” Paula said Thursday as family and friends helped pick up the scattered pieces of their lives. “But Doug really thought we should, and we weren’t in there but a few seconds before it hit. Doug covered us until it passed, then he looked up and said, ‘The house is gone.’”

            Family and friends gathered at the Denards’ immediately after the storm to help locate

Just after the tornado Wednesday night, the Denard home was only a pile of rubble.

valuables before heavy rain returned. The home of the Thomas Gunters next door became the staging point for a relief effort as dozens of family members, friends, and neighbors arrived at first light Thursday to help recover the family’s possessions and clean up the debris scattered over acres.

            As the crowd grew, food, coffee, and drinks arrived at the site from McDonald’s and Pizza Hut, and an American Red Cross disaster support truck was set up to offer help. Washington McDonald’s owners David and Janie Cravens offered a furnished home for the Denards to use, and had the home stocked and ready for the family’s arrival Thursday night.

            As the tornado progressed across the southern part of Wilkes County, it destroyed one chicken house belonging to James Tallent on Quaker Springs Road and damaged three others, and wind and debris from the structures damaged the Battle home across the road, breaking most windows and ripping the front door off the hinges.

            On Highway 47, the Sharon Road, near Hallford Road the tornado tore the steeple off Booker’s Chapel Baptist Church and dropped it in the cemetery, said Deana Acree, church secretary. “The church was damaged more by rain coming in the hole in the roof,” she said. Pastor L.K. Smith and church members were helping clean up following the storm.

            Damage was also reported to a trailer and car on Indian Hill Road, and several homes on Lundberg Road and Hallford Road sustained damage. A hunting camp on Lundberg Road was hit, with two or three trailers destroyed.

            Mr. and Mrs. Hubert Hopkins may be the luckiest people in Wilkes County, as the tornado snapped off or uprooted nearly every large pine tree on their property, but spared the house. “I can’t find even a broken window,” said Mr. Hopkins, 79. “Someone was looking out for us.”

            Fallen trees from his yard blocked Lundberg Road below Hallford Road, and the 200-yard-wide path of the tornado is visible to the east.

            As soon as it became apparent that a tornado warning was imminent, Wilkes County authorities and first responders went into action, checking county roads and responding to emergency calls as they came in. County crews worked all night to clear fallen trees from roads. No injuries were reported despite the widespread damage.

            Assistant Fire Chief Darrell Rogers said that the path of the suspected tornado was more than 20 miles long and some 500 feet wide across the southern end of the county, from the Tyrone community, through Lundberg, Aonia, across Big Cedar Road, and on into the Holliday Park area.

            The same storm front brought a tornado to Hancock County that killed one man and injured several others near Sparta Wednesday evening.