Webster’s Chapel recovery a reminder of long haul in store for Jacksonville

April 19--WEBSTER'S CHAPEL -- On March 19, as a tornado tore through Southside and headed into northern Calhoun County, Jerry King and dozens of his neighbors waited out the storm in Webster's Chapel's Storm Shelter No 2.

It was the first time anyone had used the shelter, which is underneath the newly completed A. P. Hollingsworth Community Center. King and other local residents have been working to build the center since the April 27, 2011, storms wrecked their community; they held a grand opening on Tuesday.

"It's been a slow go, because money's hard to raise when the storm was months ago, or years ago," said King, director of the Webster's Chapel Tornado Relief Fund.

Seven years after the tornado outbreak that killed nine Calhoun County residents and flattened this rural community, Webster's Chapel is still putting the finishing touches on its storm recovery. Ten miles away in Jacksonville, the years-long process is just beginning.

The storm system that missed Webster's Chapel on March 19 formed an EF-3 tornado that wrecked much of Jacksonville, damaging 531 single-family homes, by the Calhoun County Emergency Management Agency's last count. Eight hundred Jacksonville State University students, most of whom were living in off-campus apartments, were displaced, according to university officials. Representatives from local charities met Wednesday in Anniston to create a Long-Term Recovery Committee to take care of Jacksonville's needs over the long haul. And it will be a long haul, members say.

"It's going to take a long time," said Denise Rucker, newly selected chairwoman of the recovery committee. Rucker headed up a similar long-term recovery effort after the 2011 storms. The committee worked for three to four years, former members said, raising money from an increasingly hard-to-reach public and sifting through applications for assistance.

"Our biggest problem now is that we don't know how much money we're going to have," Rucker said.

A month after Jacksonville's storm, federal officials are still mulling a request for federal help with the state's estimated $35.8 million in damages. Video of the storm zone stopped appearing on the national networks weeks ago. Debris still lines the roads in Jacksonville, though the neighborhoods are no longer crawling with chain saw-wielding volunteers.

Committee members say now is when the task gets tough: There's still work to be done, but far less awareness of the storm and far fewer people ready to open their checkbooks.

"There are still a lot of folks who are displaced, lot of people who are in hotels and who are on other people's couches," said Shannon Jenkins, director of the local United Way.

So far, the committee has around $58,000 in donations to address those problems. Members know there were other fundraisers, by other organizations, and they hope those organizations will come to the table and pool their money with the committee. But they're also worried that the Jacksonville storm -- much smaller in scope than the 2011 tornado outbreak -- simply won't get the same sustained outside support.

Still, Rucker said, some things could be easier this time around. In 2011, the storm ripped through rural areas where the majority of victims were uninsured.

"They'd inherited the property from their parents, and maybe their parents inherited it too, and insurance wasn't something they thought about," Rucker said. Aid agencies typically need deeds or other proof of ownership to pay for work on house, she said. In Ohatchee and Webster's Chapel, she said, few had that paperwork.

The March 19 storm also damaged rural neighborhoods in Peek's Hill, Wellington, Angel and Nances Creek. But the bulk of the affected homes were in the Jacksonville neighborhood known as the Avenues, where new home construction crept up the hillside in the mid-20th century. Rucker said she expects many of the damaged homes there are not only insured, but are actually now the property of insurance companies that have bought off their clients' mortgages.

Empty houses -- or rather the people who once lived in them -- will be the committee's first priority, Rucker said.

"Debris removal -- I'm sorry -- is at the bottom end of our list," she said. "We need to get people into houses."

In Webster's Chapel, there's still work for Jerry King to do even now.

Hollingsworth Road and the volunteer fire department -- the closest thing the community has to a downtown -- were right in the path of the 2011 storm. Today the community looks like a new settlement on a clear-cut frontier. Large new houses sit on grassy hills, reminiscent of a golf course community. Newer mobile homes stand near crumbling decks where a home once stood. There are still storm-stunted woods, with broken trees sticking out above young pines.

"We're better off than we were, but emotionally, we'll never be the same," King said.

The Hollingsworth Community Center, clad in the same off-white metal siding as the fire station, looks for all the world like a small church's fellowship hall, with folding banquet tables and an open kitchen. King said it cost about $130,000 to build. When post-storm publicity died down, residents raised money by selling Boston butts. Lawmakers and state agencies wrote the occasional grant check, $10,000 or so at a time. King is now selling plaques to commemorate donors in the center. That could raise money for a septic system and fill lines, something the center doesn't have yet.

He said the work is worth it.

"I think the shelter paid for itself during the storm on March 19," he said.

To donate to the long-term recovery effort for Jacksonville, go to yourcommunityfirst.org

Capitol & statewide reporter Tim Lockette: 256-294-4193. On Twitter @TLockette_Star.

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