Thomas and McDonald are being helped by Winston Strong, a local storm-recovery charity that has raised more than $400,000 so far and disbursed more than $280,000. “The only fear I have is, will it come back again?” “I think I’ll come out all right,” Thomas said. On April 28, Thomas ended up under a door as his house collapsed, and then helped a neighbor dig out her two children. Up the hill, Walter Thomas sat in one of 25 FEMA house trailers distributed after the storm, waiting his turn for assistance. The storm created new problems: an unusable hospital and nursing home, wrecked factories and hundreds of homeless residents.Įarlier this month, the percussive thunk of a nail gun sounded on Louisville’s Beal Avenue as Mennonite volunteers from Indiana rebuilt a home. The county’s 19,000 residents were already grappling with a depressed economy and dwindling population. The 185 mph monster that tore diagonally across Winston County was the most powerful, destroying 391 buildings – more than half of buildings destroyed statewide. Twenty-three tornadoes raked Mississippi on April 28.
“When a heavy rain comes or bad weather comes, he just watches the trees and starts shaking,” said McDonald. Selose McDonald said her 25-year-old son Bubba, thrown from the family mobile home and injured in the storm, wakes up screaming from nightmares. The scars are healing, but a thunderstorm can still spark community-wide anxiety. “We have an opportunity to do in the next two to three years what would normally take 10 years,” said Louisville Mayor Will Hill.
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