— Stacy Cottom sat on her new front porch last week, holding her pet Maltese and gazing out at Brady Street, the small cul-de-sac that bore the brunt of the tornado that tore through this small town before dawn on Feb. 29.
Six of Cottom’s neighbors died. She and her husband were blown out of their home and tossed across the street, landing in a muddy field littered with broken glass, splintered lumber and crushed appliances. All 10 duplexes on the street were destroyed, many ripped right off their foundations.
But now, six months later, the Brady Street that Cottom sees from her porch looks much as it did before the storm. All 10 duplexes have been rebuilt with the same one-story floor plans and light tan siding. Some new residents have moved in, but half the units will be occupied by people who lived there when the storm hit, despite the horror they experienced.
“I’m not afraid of another tornado,” Cottom, 38, said Wednesday, watching a semitrailer deliver a load of dirt to fill in a yard across the street. “If it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go. Honestly, I’m not afraid of that.”
The tornado, categorized as an EF4, the second-most powerful, cut through this town of about 9,000 people in the heart of Illinois’ coal mining country with 170 mph winds, leveling trees, reducing a strip mall to a pile of twisted beams, and knocking out walls and windows at the town’s hospital. Eight people died, scores were injured and more than 250 homes were destroyed.
Although the damage was spread over nearly eight miles, no area suffered as much concentrated death and destruction as Brady Street, which has become a symbol of Harrisburg’s determination to rebuild and move on, Mayor Eric Gregg said.
“To be into this thing six months, and to see this is just phenomenal,” he said, watching as workers scuttled back and forth last week, grading dirt around the new duplexes. “It’s a very wonderful act of defiance, if you ask me.”
For some, however, the sight of the new homes on Brady Street is too much to take.
Lyndi Bowman, 21, hasn’t been back in about five months since she and her family finished collecting all the personal effects belonging to her grandmother that they could find.
Bowman’s grandmother, Lynda Hull, had moved into her duplex at 77 Brady St. last summer, after her husband died. She became such close friends with her neighbors Randy and Donna Mae Rann that she joked they had adopted her, Bowman said.
“She kept saying, ‘This is where the Lord intended me to be,'” Bowman said.
Hull, 74, and the Ranns were killed by the tornado.
While Bowman said she is glad the duplexes have been rebuilt and residents have been able to return, she can no longer bring herself to look at the homes, even from a distance.
“Even just going to Wal-Mart or heading out of town where I can see Brady Street, it makes me feel physically ill,” Bowman said, clutching her grandmother’s heart-shaped gold necklace she found in the mud in the days after the tornado. “Even though I’m happy it’s back, it’s still like seeing a ghost.”
Jeff Street, whose Brady Street duplex was destroyed by the tornado, decided to buy a home about a mile away instead of moving into the new duplex built on the same site as his old one. Street emerged from his home’s wreckage unscathed after the tornado, but his wife, daughter and two young grandsons were buried under the rubble for more than an hour.
They have healed from their injuries, but Street said he’s afraid his grandsons, ages 4 and 5, would have refused to visit him if he moved back to Brady Street. And, he conceded, he’s not sure he could handle moving back to the place where his family endured so much trauma.
“It looked just like it did when we lived in it, and it kind of gave me a chill,” said Street, 46, a guard at a nearby prison for teens. “I still dream about it sometimes.”
Danny Morse understands why some of his former tenants might not want to return to the new homes he’s built on Brady Street. He fought back tears in the hours after the tornado hit, helping dig through what was left of the duplexes he built between 2004 and last summer. Since then, he and his crews have worked at least eight hours a day to clear the site and build the new homes.
“I enjoyed it the first time around,” Morse, 60, said Tuesday, his white sneakers caked in dust, and sweat beading on his forehead. “This last time around, I did not enjoy one day of it.”
Despite his grief at losing friends, Morse said he realized in the days after the tornado that the best thing he could do to help his surviving tenants and other people who lost their homes was to rebuild as quickly as possible.
“Reality sets in, and you’ve got to pick up the pieces,” he said. “There were a lot of pieces to pick up.”
Like Morse, Rebecca Mauney also felt she needed to rebuild as soon as possible, although she changed the design of her new home to protect against future storms. The new house — just up the hill from Brady Street, on the same site as her old house — has concrete walls instead of a wood frame. Her bedroom will have four concrete walls and a steel door.
The precautions are understandable. The tornado sucked Mauney and her husband, Roy Blaine Mauney, out of their house and threw them about 90 feet across the street, where they landed next to each other. Both suffered severe injuries, including several broken bones and deep cuts.
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Rebecca Mauney, 63, has recovered. But her husband, 74, died of his injuries May 31, becoming the eighth person killed by the tornado.
Still, Mauney said she never considered moving elsewhere.
“I knew I was going to build back,” she said as the sun dipped below the tree line, watching as her son and a hired worker hurried to install windows before darkness fell. “This is my home.”
Insurance has covered most of the costs of rebuilding Mauney’s house and the Brady Street duplexes. But the exposed foundations and empty lots that dot the hillside near Mauney’s house show that progress has been much slower for people who didn’t have insurance, were underinsured or just didn’t have the means or desire to rebuild on the same spot.
Harrisburg’s mayor said he hopes the city — about 330 miles south of Chicago — is eventually able to erase all the storm’s scars from the landscape, even if it means cutting down every twisted shrub and sheared tree stump.
“We want no remnants of this thing left, other than a memorial to those we lost,” Gregg said, looking at several mangled trees near a rebuilt gas station.
Gregg estimates the tornado has cost Harrisburg about $15 million in damage and lost business, a huge hit just a few years after the city sustained about $20
million in damage from flooding in 2008.
In March, the Federal Emergency Management Agency denied two requests for aid from Harrisburg and other southern Illinois towns in five counties damaged by tornadoes Feb. 29. A FEMA spokesman said at the time that officials determined assistance from state and local agencies, along with volunteer groups and insurance, would be enough for the towns to rebuild on their own.
Harrisburg has been boosted by donations of money and supplies from local churches, businesses and strangers, Gregg said. Barely a day goes by when he doesn’t get a message from someone looking to help, he said.
“Our family in Harrisburg now extends literally from one side of the country to the other,” the mayor said, a giant cardboard check for $25,000 from Wal-Mart leaning on his office wall behind him.
Some of the most direct help has come from Harrisburg residents whose homes weren’t damaged by the tornado.
A guidance counselor at Harrisburg’s middle school bought three pairs of jeans for Toni Crisp, 13, and underwear and socks for her 5-year-old sister, Tyli Harp, whose home on Brady Street was destroyed. And just before classes ended for the summer, school officials gave the girls’ father, Russel Harp, gift cards worth roughly $1,000 at several stores in town. They have moved back to the same location.
“A lot of times, my experience is when things are worst in a community, that’s when people tend to be the nicest,” said Harp, who was serving in the Middle East with the Air Force when the tornado hit. “It was nice of them to do that because they definitely didn’t have to.”
Margaret Shimkus, who moved into one of the new duplexes on Brady Street about four months after her nearby apartment was destroyed by the tornado, said she considers herself blessed because of the help she and her husband, Tony, received after the storm.
Shimkus, 62, said she had no reservations about being one of the new residents on the rebuilt Brady Street.
“I’m perfectly fine with being here,” she said as she and her husband relaxed in their new living room, watching a St. Louis Cardinals game. “My feeling is that when God’s ready for you, there are no hiding places.”
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