FEMA responds to house ’tilting’ from tornado’s wrath

Feb. 09--COOLIDGE -- George Smith served two tours of duty in Vietnam, but he was never so afraid as during the predawn hours on a January Sunday when a tornado ripped through the bedroom where he and his dog slept.

"We heard the noise coming. I said, 'What's all that noise?' That's when it hit," the 69-year-old Smith said.

His brother, 65, was asleep in another room of the 16869 U.S. 319 North house when a tornado touched down between 2:30 and 3 a.m. on Jan. 22.

A dresser fell on George Smith, who was hospitalized seven days. He could not stand, then developed a kidney infection.

High winds blew out a window and wall of the room where he slept. His bed is visible on the other side of the gaping opening.

"She was in the room with me," Smith said about his dog, Shea, who stayed close to her master's side as Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) personnel visited the site Thursday morning. "She walked a little wobbly for a minute, but I think she's all right."

The house was lifted from its moorings and leans precariously against Smith's white pickup parked on the south side of the house.

"The truck is probably keeping the house from falling," Smith said.

"There's the doorway. There's the stairs," Michael Gaan, FEMA disaster survival assistant reservist, said, pointing out how the front door has shifted away from concrete steps.

When strong wind forced the house to tilt, brick chimneys collapsed onto the roof and into the yard.

The 80-plus-year-old house where Smith and his brother live belonged to their mother, who died in September 2016.

Said Gaan, "They didn't transfer the house yet. Lawyers are working on it."

The house is insured. A FEMA inspector will assess damage to the house and, taking into account insurance coverage, determine the value of the structure. Help might be possible from FEMA and the Small Business Administration (SBA).

The Smith residence "is obviously totally destroyed," Gaan said.

If money is owed on a first mortgage on a damaged house, an SBA low-interest loan -- at 1 percent or 2 percent -- might be an option, Cheria Brown, FEMA media specialist, said.

SBA provides low-interest loans "to make you whole again," Brown said. " ... We are not always able to put homeowners back to predisaster state."

FEMA officials have looked at several Thomas County houses and will inspect 20 more.

"Right now," Gaan said, in reference to the Smith house, "nobody owns the house. The house is in limbo."

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