Up close and personal …

Tornado damage widespread but also intimately entwined into individual lives

By RALPH HARDIN

ralphhardin@gmail.com I t can be easy to look at photo after photo of leveled buildings, uprooted trees and twisted remnants of wood and metal left behind after a devastating tornado and lose sight of the fact that more than just “stuff” was damaged.

Buildings can be rebuilt. Property can be replaced, and even physical wounds can heal, but every damaged home or overturned car or banged up business has someone attached to it that might find it difficult to move on or fully recover emotionally or mentally.

Raymond Whiteside, community development specialist for the City of West Memphis, and West Memphis police officer Vantwone Ford took a trip over to Wynne following the March 31, 2023, tornado and saw some of the widespread damage up close and personal.

“A lot of damage in between Clarendon and Brinkley on 302,” Whiteside reported. Also saw quite a bit of damage on Highway 70, between Brinkley and Wheatley.”

Along their journey, Whiteside and Ford came across a man sifting through what remained of his homestead, which appeared to have borne the brunt of the EF2 twister.

He held up a large printed photo of his home, which bore little resemblance to the tattered structure left behind. Outside on the property grounds an overturned vehicle, a smashed shed and piles of broken tree limbs and all sorts of debris were strewn about.

Inside the home, it wasn’t much better. Along one wall, two large 2×4 boards from who knows where had flown into the home through a broken window and lodged in the drywall. Nearby,