The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
North Georgia city recovering slowly
A year later, Ringgold residents still dealing with twister trauma. Scars psychological, physical and financial.
Ringgold’s infrastructure is restored, but its people struggle with the aftermath of one of the worst tornado outbreaks ever.
RINGGOLD — At the community level, the healing is well under way since a tornado tore this North Georgia city apart and killed eight people a year ago.
Volunteers still come to rebuild homes, many businesses have reopened though others won’t return, and the high school that lost two students hopes graduation will put a tough year behind it.
But for people like Sandra Self, April 17, 2011, will remain a sharp memory. The scars — physical and psychological — won’t let her forget.
Self and her husband, Dennis, were caught nearly unawares when 175 mph winds destroyed their Cherokee Valley home during the tornado’s 13-mile sweep from Ringgold to Tennessee. Like many, they had ignored the weather warnings during the day and only awoke to the danger seconds before it hit.
Sandra found herself sucked into the vortex, where she was pelted with debris, much of it probably from what seconds earlier was her house. Just as suddenly, it ended, and the 60-yearold woman was back on the ground, bruised and humbled.
“You are totally insignificant to anything going on in it,” Self said.
Dennis, 63, didn’t fare as well. The storm pushed him and the house down the hill-
skin. When a doctor reached a rain-soaked Dennis hours later — after a rescue team had to saw its way through downed trees blocking the road — he said the bone had to be set then or the foot would surely be lost.
Firefighters held Dennis down while he screamed. After three tries, the bone set.
The ankle has yet to heal. After undergoing five surgeries — with another scheduled next month to fuse in a bone from a cadaver — Dennis is still using a wheelchair. It has left him unable to regularly fulfill his duties as pastor at Free Hope Baptist Church in nearby Chatsworth. Doctors tell him he still may lose the foot.
“I would have been better off without it,” he said. “It has been very difficult to cope. Every time you think you’re going to be walking, you get slapped back down.”
Sandra, the Catoosa County tax commissioner, said the physical injuries, scarred hillsides of toppled and topped trees, and widespread property damage are only the most visible legacy. A darkened sky or howling wind can bring a shiver of panic to people who confronted the tornado.
Ruth Montgomery wonders whether her 14-year-old grandson should get counseling.
“Malik is all right as long as the sun is shining,” said Montgomery, 62. “If the clouds come out, he is burning up my cellphone.”
When it’s stormy, he paces and peers out windows while listening to the weather radio he bought. If a tornado warning is reported, he heads to the bathroom with a blanket, a lantern and a motorcycle helmet.
“If there is a good wind, I don’t want to go anywhere near it,” Malik said.
The teen, with an easy smile, freely acknowledges that he is haunted by the memory of that night. It started with a card game. Ruth Montgomery, confident the storm would bypass Ringgold because so many others had, was teaching Phase 10, a game like rummy, to Malik and his twin sister, Maleia. She made only one concession to the weather, clearing out a closet.
Just after 8 p.m., the onestory house at 388 Sparks St. started shaking. The children rushed to the closet, screaming for their grandmother to join them. “Like an idiot,” as she put it, she was at the window looking for the tornado.
She barely made it to them before the house exploded. A moment later, the closet was one of the few parts of the house still standing. Across the street, Mount Peria Baptist Church looked like a giant doll- house, its leeward wall missing and all the neatly arranged pews clearly visible. At the pulpit, the Bible sat undisturbed.
“We haven’t played that card game since,” Malik said
That night they sought shelter at a neighbor’s home. Malik crawled into a closet with a pillow to sleep, refusing entreaties to come out.
“We won’t get over that tornado,” Ruth Montgomery said. “When it gets dark and cloudy, you see everybody in the neighborhood is wandering around looking up in the air.”
Reminders every day
Ringgold High School principal Sharon Vaughn hopes graduation May 25 will usher in a re-
“When it gets dark and cloudy, you see everybody in the neighborhood is wandering around looking up in the air.”
Ruth Montgomery
Ringgold tornado survivor
turn to “normalcy.” The past 12 months have been spent rebuilding and repairing high school and middle school buildings, athletic fields and student psyches.
After more than $38 million in expenditures, the schools are rebuilt, and the high school now boasts first-rate playing fields and gyms.
Students who finished last year at Heritage High School returned to Ringgold High in the fall minus two classmates who would have been seniors this year. Chelsea Black, 16, died in Cherokee Valley along with her father, mother and older brother. Adam “Tex” Carroll, a 17-year-old wrestler, and his younger brother went to visit his grandmother in Apison, Tenn., 11 miles north, after school closed early that day because of the tornado warning. The twister struck her trailer. Tex, who was lying on top of his brother in the bathtub, is credited with saving the youngster’s life while losing his own.
At this year’s prom, Chelsea and Tex were runners-up in the voting for king and queen.
“There are still students in the school now who continue to struggle with the issue,” Vaughn said. “Here we are at graduation day and there are two kids missing who would have graduated with them.
“There isn’t a single day that goes by that something doesn’t remind us, like the prom.”
Economic toll
Some numbers help tell the story.
The storm swept 81 homes off Catoosa County’s property tax rolls, for a combined value of $7.1 million, said Dale McCurdy, the county’s chief appraiser.
Ringgold City Manager Dan Wright said the city suffered nearly $79 million in damage to structures, which cut city tax and water-sewer collections by about $103,000 as of March.
The one bright spot, he said, is a direct result of the destruction. Sales tax collections are up 7 percent, by about $17,000. “It was because everybody is having to buy lumber and those kind of things to make repairs,” Wright said.
Most of the fast-food restaurants at the I-75 exit reopened this fall. But four motels remain closed.
“It was a really rough year, we were dealing with loss of life and loss of businesses,” said Raye Brooks, president of Ringgold Downtown Partners, a business association.
Mount Peria Baptist began its $1 million rebuilding effort this month. Paul Croft, a deacon, said the church got off to a slow start in part because it expected to get federal funding for the cleanup on its downtown lot. After a few months, the Federal Emergency Management Agency let it know otherwise, Croft said.
FEMA spokesman Mary Hudak said much of the public operates under the wrong impression that federal money is going to underwrite much of the disaster costs. Of the 1,013 in Catoosa County who filed for federal aid for property, medical and personal assistance, only 299 were deemed eligible for a total $1 million in grants. FEMA did approve more than $5 million in public assistance for the county, records show.
The agency steers most applicants to low-interest loans from the Small Business Administration and nonprofit groups for assistance, Hudak said.
“People think FEMA will help you get money,” Roy Dale Cope said. “They will help you get a vacuum cleaner and a chain saw.”
Contempt and praise
Cope has done the rounds with FEMA. The pharmacist and his wife, Joy, had built a 2,318-square-foot house off Cherokee Valley Road and hoped to retire there. But that was before the storm tore it from the ground and slammed it into the hillside. The Copes, who huddled in the basement with their teenage sons Shay and Seth, were unscathed — at least physically.
Financially, it’s another story. Cope, 48, lost his pharmacy in Ringgold, which he had only owned for a couple of years. Insurance didn’t cover the business loss. His home insurance paid off the mortgage, and he was approved for a $200,000 SBA loan to rebuild.
Looters, Cope said, hit the building site twice, making off with $15,000 in tools. He strung a banner threatening “deadly force” against the next bunch.
“If I were king, I would bring back public flogging,” he said. “I just couldn’t understand how anybody could stoop so low when you were already hurting.”
Cope saves his praise for the churches that have helped. Down the road, Cherokee Valley Baptist Church provided lunch and dinner every day for weeks. Its members picked up clothes scattered in front of wrecked houses, washed them and brought them back pressed.
Church relief missions sent volunteers from as close as Acworth and Smoke Rise and as far away as Michigan and Wisconsin to help families rebuild. Amish and Mennonite volunteers, a group with scores of skilled carpenters, slept on the stage at the United Methodist Church of Ringgold until a few weeks ago.
“They are the ones who really rebuilt the homes,” said Philip Ledbetter, the chairman of Catoosa Organization Acting in Disaster, the nonprofit formed to coordinate volunteers and raise money. Because the Amish and Mennonites don’t believe in war, they don’t join the military. So this is how they serve, Ledbetter said.
“They were awesome for what they did for our community,” he said.
COAD raised $610,000 to build 15 houses, reroof 78 others and substantially repair an additional 27, Ledbetter said.
The Presbyterians came to Cope’s aid, assigning a skilled carpenter to supervise the construction. He left a few weeks ago, leaving a sound structure that still needs the trimmings. The Copes have an address book full of volunteers who came for weeklong periods to help them rebuild.
“Every church that came here, they need to know how appreciative we are,” Cope said. “It goes to show we can take care of ourselves. With the guidance of God, people are merciful.”