Mark Bennett: Indiana town recovers with hope — 'We will rebuild, better'

Apr. 6—A sense of loss, memories and resiliency linger in Robinson, days after a powerful tornado disrupted life in this east-central Illinois community of 7,187 residents.

An old photograph of Marty Bell and her sister, dressed in Easter outfits, captures all of those emotions.

It was found this week in Clay City, 50 miles from its origin — the Robinson home of Bell's mother, Rebecca Bradbury.

Last Friday night, the EF-3 tornado, with winds up to 155 miles per hour, roared along a 42-mile path northeast from Jasper County, through Crawford County and into Indiana, decimating the town of Sullivan, where three people died. The twister traveled for 35 minutes, the National Weather Service reported. It hit Robinson shortly after 9 p.m. Central Time, also claiming three lives, injuring 10 people, destroying 35 homes and causing significant damage to 53 other dwellings, Crawford County Sheriff William Rutan said Wednesday.

The deaths in Robinson included Bradbury, 70; Donovan Douglas, 39; and Sue Chronic, 50, according to the Sheriff's Department.

The storm destroyed Bradbury's home. Its remnants were found in a neighboring field, her daughter, Marty Bell, said.

On Monday, a member of a Facebook "Lost and Found" group located the photograph of Bell and her sister Heather Angle in Clay City. It shows them as youngsters, prepared to celebrate Easter Sunday, an occasion their mother loved, said Bell, who lives in Owen County, Ind., and is now 44. Bradbury will be buried today, Good Friday.

Bradbury liked to read, travel and listen to music, and faithfully attended her grandchildren's activities. "And she just loved Robinson," Bell said. "Everybody knew my mom, and she knew everybody. And if she didn't, she'd talk to you till she did."

Bradbury was born in Robinson and grew up in Crawford County in a family of seven children, her daughter explained. Her survivors include her siblings, children, step-children, grandchildren and step-grandchildren, Bell said. Bradbury's husband, Jerry, died last June.

On the night of the tornado, Bradbury was home alone in the modular house they'd occupied for nearly a quarter-century, Bell said, and didn't seem worried in phone texts as the storm approached.

"The neighbor said [the tornado] went really fast — they heard it, and it was gone," Bell said.

The tornado's path dodged the Marathon Oil Refinery in Robinson, going a couple hundred yards south of that facility and just north of a nearby ethanol plant, explained Bill Burke, the Crawford County Board chairman. Burke recounted the storm's impact on Monday afternoon, as his cellphone continually pinged with tornado-aftermath calls and texts inside the Robinson Community Center.

"It wouldn't have taken much [deviation from that path], and it would've been a whole different ballgame," Burke said.

Travis Miller, chief of the Robinson Fire Department, nodded his head in agreement. "The release of hazardous chemicals would've been dangerous," Miller said, "a long cleanup."

Rescue and recovery efforts went long, nonetheless, for Miller's RFD crew along with other first-responders, public and private agencies from the county and beyond, a legion of utility workers, and many volunteers. Miller praised them all. The efforts included "citizens helping their neighbors dig out of rubble piles," the chief said. Fire crews extricated people trapped in the basement of a collapsed house, cared for other injured and helped transport others by ambulance to a hospital.

Miller grew up in the neighboring Crawford County town of Palestine and later moved to Robinson. As a fire chief, he's assisted in relief efforts in other destructive tornadoes. He responded to the EF-4 2013 tornado that hit the Illinois towns of Washington and Gifford, the deadliest in state history, and the EF-5 tornado that took 158 lives in 2011.

Last Friday's tornado packed a heavy magnitude, in local terms, for Miller and other Crawford County residents. "It is very tragic," he said in a hallway of the Robinson Community Center. "You never expect it to happen in your backyard, let alone to family and friends. It's devastating."

Losing three residents hurts. "It's a small community," Miller said. "You've either had contact with them, or you know them."

A spirit of volunteerism and support emerged from the tragedy. "The community has been amazing," Sheriff Rutan said Wednesday. "They've stepped up and helped their neighbors and families. It's amazing to see how they've worked together."

By Monday, two churches were filled with donated relief supplies, so much that Burke urged anyone anxious to help to consider monetary contributions. On South Cross Street, where numerous homes have lost roofs and windows and walls, a cacophony of chainsaws and beeping earthmovers filled the air under Wednesday afternoon amid the juxtaposition with sunshine and clear blue skies.

"There's a lot of damage, a lot of work ahead of us," Rutan said, while noting that roadways had been cleared and power restored to nearly all of Crawford County. On the morning after the storm, Gov. JB Pritzker declared Crawford and four other counties disaster areas to speed up aid to those areas.

Structural damage from the tornado was especially harsh for two community cornerstones — Lincoln Trail College and the Crawford County Airport.

Lincoln Trail began educating people from the community and elsewhere in 1969. Friday's storm heavily damaged its south campus, a mile south of the main campus, Sheriff Rutan said. That location housed LTC's satellite communications training center.

A few miles east of that site sits the Crawford County Airport. The rural Illinois countryside extends for miles on the horizon. A pair of airport buildings 20 and 40 feet tall, and two airplane hangars once dotted that flat view.

They're gone now. Friday's storm flattened airport buildings and scattered their contents, leaving metal siding and airplane pieces twisted around wind-stripped trees.

"Everything — a total loss," said Howard Hunt, airport manager and fixed-base operator. Its main building, the other buildings, hangars, 20 airplanes and other equipment were destroyed.

A concrete-block-walled building was essentially gone. A few blocks remained on its foundational floor. A metal tower was bent over. A display in the airport lobby of shirttails of pilots that had just flown solo for the first time was destroyed, and one of the lost shirttails was found, ironically, in Sullivan, Ind., this week.

"It just got decimated," Tyler Devonshire, insurance agent for airport, said as he, Hunt and others assessed the damage Monday. So, for it to take down that building, and bend that [tower], that's something."

The loss of routine airport services affects the core of Robinson's economy and wellbeing. Doctors based out of town fly into the airport weekly to serve patients at Crawford Memorial Hospital and local healthcare facilities. New pilots train and earn certifications there. A coming expansion at the Hershey plant and a project at the Marathon Oil Refinery will bring teams of employees to Robinson, and the airport would be an essential hub to transport those workers. An air show, which has attracted thousands in the past, is scheduled to return this fall.

"This is a pillar of our community," Devonshire said.

Burke, the county board chairman, phoned Illinois U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth to seek federal help in expediting the airport's reconstruction. On Wednesday, Duckworth said in an email to the Tribune-Star, "The storm damage affecting Crawford County Airport is tragic. This airport is a critical economic driver and hub for southeastern Illinois. I spoke with Crawford County Board Chair Bill Burke this week and am committed to helping the Crawford County Airport rebuild as quickly as possible. I've raised the issue to the U.S. Department of Transportation and am working with local officials to find ways we can provide assistance from the federal level."

Cody Yeager, an airport board member, estimated the rebuilding could take from 12 to 24 months. Its runways remain solid and able to handle incoming flights, despite the lost facilities, he said Monday.

Devonshire ran a hand over his forehead and looked out at the airport, squinting in the bright sunshine. "We're going to rebuild," he said confidently. "And it will be better."

Mark Bennett can be reached at 812-231-4377 or [email protected].

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