Amish, Mennonites begin rebuilding after tornado

CANNELBURG, Ind. -- Amish and Mennonite volunteers have begun rebuilding houses stripped by a tornado that carved a swath of destruction through rural southern Indiana.\nBefore officials had even completed their damage assessment, hundreds of volunteers from both faiths swarmed the littered hillsides and battered rooftops Wednesday morning.\nThey piled debris into bonfires, replaced shingles and reframed houses laid bare by the storm that the National Weather Service said cut a path 12 miles long and a quarter-mile wide through Daviess and Martin counties.\n"If you look at them, they've got a hand up, not a hand out," said Daviess County Commissioner Tony Wichman.\nThe storm rendered 64 homes unlivable, and between 45 and 70 more had lesser damage, said Wichman, who is not Amish or Mennonite, but is familiar with both communities. The winds also destroyed two of the dozen or so Amish schools in the county, 25 barns and some livestock.\nWichman estimated that those homes that can be fixed would be within a few days and that volunteers would rebuild many of the destroyed homes within a month.\nAbout 700 Amish families and at least as many Mennonites live in the area, said Earl Wagler, a Mennonite leader and chief of the Cannelburg Volunteer Fire Department.\nResidents whose homes were not damaged by Tuesday's storm were pitching in to help, and more volunteers from northern Indiana and Illinois were expected to arrive by the weekend, he said.\nThe volunteers were taking part in a mutual aid system that draws from a pool of common labor and money for repairs when the community is in need. The faiths use the system rather than mainstream insurance policies, Wichman and Wagler said.\n"We try and get done what we can," Wagler said.\nWichman said he did not think the rapid repairs would complicate state and federal agencies' relief efforts.\nThe American Red Cross set up a shelter for storm victims Tuesday night in a country store, but no one used it, said Sheryl Ring-Laakman, director of the area's chapter.\n"I think most people found someplace to stay," she said.\nSome people did eat at a Red Cross canteen, she said. But by Wednesday, Amish and Mennonite restaurants and other businesses had set up their own places for victims and volunteers to eat.\nThe Red Cross planned to set up a relief center Thursday at the Berea Mennonite Church in Cannelburg, she said.\nNational Weather Service teams found that two tornadoes of F3 strength, with winds of 158 mph to 206 mph on the Fujita scale, struck the state Tuesday in a wave of thunderstorms that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes.\nOne of the tornadoes cut the 12-mile path after first touching down in Daviess County, causing damage around the towns of Washington, Montgomery and Cannelburg, before pushing into Martin County, where the town of Bramble sustained damage.\nThe second F3 tornado pushed through central Indiana's Bartholomew County, causing damage near Hope. It then pushed into Shelby County, where it damaged about a dozen homes before dissipating just short of Saint Paul in Decatur County.\nA less-powerful F1 tornado hit Grant County, midway between Fort Wayne and Indianapolis, damaging grain elevator, the weather service said.\nSeveral injuries were reported, but the state's only storm-related death came when a teenager in central Indiana's Hancock County lost control of her car on a patch of high water and landed upside down in a drainage culvert, police said.\nAmong the worst damage in Daviess County was at, where the tornado blew apart the building where home trusses were made. Factory managers had sent workers home early because of storm warnings, and no one was injured at the plant, said employee Abe Knepp.\n"It's a miracle that everybody got out of here," he said, gazing around at the remains of the building scattered like pick-up sticks and spilled down the hillside across farm fields and yards.