Trailer park residents reel from Coxey catastrophe

April 30--COXEY -- Nancy Musser pointed to a mangled mobile home and six garbage bags of belongings.

"This is our home -- what's left of it," she said Tuesday morning, peering at the devastation in this Limestone County community from an EF2 or EF3 tornado.

Musser and about 30 other residents of Billy Barb Trailer Park crammed into a storm shelter Monday night as the tornado bore down. Two people in the park were killed.

When the "booms," "pops" and "freight train-like" sounds stopped, residents opened the door to the shelter. Clothes, toys, dishes, furniture and other personal belongings were scattered among the rubble and splintered wood.

Kevin Toone, park maintenance man and resident, said the tornado wiped out 24 mobile homes and 23 trailers at the park, leaving about 60 people homeless.

"I'm speechless," Musser said, while squeezing rainwater out of a shirt. "I've seen it on TV. You never know what it's like. You feel sorry for those people. You pray for them, and boom it happens to you."

Dorothy Jean Hollis, 60, and her son Carlton Earl Hollis, 34, stayed in their mobile home, about 15 yards from the storm shelter. Both were killed. Their mobile home was lifted off the ground, flipped and folded at the middle.

The mother and son had lived in the park for just two or three months, so most of their neighbors only knew them by sight.

Musser said she saw the sky turn green and a funnel start to form in the sky as she ran to the storm shelter with her fiance, daughter and two grandchildren. Musser saw Dorothy Jean Hollis looking out the door as she ran by.

Musser's greatest fear was her family's safety. Now, she doesn't know what the next step will be.

"There are about 40 families that lost everything with no insurance," Musser said.

Park resident Jasmine Hunt was relieved that she was not at the park when the tornado hit. Hunt and her fiance, Brett Burks, went to her grandparents' home until the storm was over. Hunt left her rabbit, Thumper, in the mobile home.

Hunt worried about their belongings at the park -- and Thumper, who survived.

"I just stood there and looked in shock," Hunt said while holding Thumper.

Half of Hunt and Burks' mobile home was completely gone with their belongings scattered among everyone else's things in the park.

By the time David Simmons decided to go to the storm shelter, it was too late. He held his dog, Roscoe, and took cover in his bathroom. He closed his eyes until the tornado passed.

"I felt the trailer come off the ground," Simmons said.

He said a sink and toilet landed on him. A piece of wood was within an inch of going through his neck. Aside from sore muscles and some cuts, Simmons walked away from his destroyed trailer. Roscoe made it, too.

Leah Cayson can be reached at 256-340-2445 or leah.cayson@decaturdaily.com. Follow on Twitter @DD_Leah.

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