Evansville community recovers from deadly November tornado

When Joanne Taylor stuck her head outside of her house Nov. 6 right after a tornado had just left only one wall of her home standing, the first thing she heard was her neighbor asking if anyone needed help.\nBroken glass was everywhere, she said, and it was cold so the neighbors brought shoes and blankets. Then they all went across the street to help a "little old lady" out of her house.\nThis is just one of many scenes where the Evansville community came together during the tragic tornado in southern Indiana that destroyed Taylor's home, along with at least 300 others, killing 23.\nWhile some in the United States were arguing about who was to blame for the slow response to Hurricane Katrina, the counties and cities affected by the tornado disaster were deciding who should be congratulated for the great response that Indiana State Representative Suzanne Crouch attributed to a "can-do-it attitude that dictates (Hoosiers) take care of ourselves and our neighbors."\nThe response to the tornado was instant, and the help hasn't stopped since then with both the government and the community stepping in to help out the victims.\n"(The community) really banded together and helped each other," said Kevin Morris, senior pastor at Main Street Baptist Church in Boonville, Ind. "It was a really neat thing to watch."\nFirefighters were at an Evansville mobile home park where 15 people died only a few minutes after the tornado hit, said Pam Bright, director of public information and outreach for the Indiana Department of Homeland of Security.\nBesides the help from traditional first responders, family members converged to help the tornado victims as well. Taylor's son came to check on her just hours after the tornado, even though his home had $30,000 worth damage and his car had been destroyed, Taylor said.\nMany others stayed with either family or had insurance to pay for hotels because even though the Red Cross opened over-night shelters, they didn't stay open for long because no one was using them, Bright said.\nThe day after the tornado when the sun first lit the wreckage of homes and lives, the owners were already cleaning up what was left, and volunteers were out there helping them.\n"There were almost too many people," Taylor said.\nShe had people from her church, neighbors, family, and those she didn't know helping her sift through the debris, she said. Besides that, workers from local restaurants walked through the neighborhoods with free food\n"Someone finished taking our house down and we don't know who did that," Taylor said. "That saved us a chunk of change." All she remembered doing was signing a piece of paper saying it was OK, she said.\nAfter cleaning up their old lives, the victims had to try to move on to new ones and a coalition of government agencies, insurance companies, and charity is helping them do that.\nMost of the people have insurance that will pay for much of the recovery, but for those who don't or don't have enough, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will help them cover the rest of the costs, Bright said.\nThe community also pitched in $1.2 million with a local telethon with half of the proceeds going to the Red Cross and the other half going to the Salvation Army, said Brenna Garnnet, media consultant for the Evansville Red Cross. That was enough money to pay for all of the local relief efforts of the Red Cross.\nThe telethon collected so much money that the Red Cross told people to donate to other relief funds or to the national Red Cross fund, Garnnet said. She compared this with the Red Cross response to Hurricane Katrina, where it had to use a loan to cover its costs.\nHabitat for Humanity is also helping rebuild the destroyed homes. It is reserving the 25 lots it already had before the tornado for tornado victims, said Sally Gries, community relations director for Habitat for Humanity of Evansville.\nAnother reason why the relief effort went so smoothly besides the outstanding community support, said Garnnet, was that the local governments and the Red Cross had plans for exactly this type of event.\n"They had great emergency plans in place," Bright said, "and they put them in action"