SC tornado victims face rebuilding new year

ROCK HILL --?

Mud, Jabo Ferrell explains, is "where the kitchen was."

"There's no kitchen any more," said Ferrell. "No living room either. Or den. Or porch. Or anything else."

Albert "Jabo" Ferrell, a builder all his life, whose hands are so hard they may as well be made of steel like the hammer he carries, stood in the dirt on the exact spot where he and his wife, Judy, were when the Nov. 16 tornado hit.

They were on the couch, watching television.

"We heard it and I started to get the couch to put over her, keep the roof from falling on her, and I looked up and there wasn't any roof," Jabo Ferrell recalled. "There was debris all over us. The place was gone all around. And all that happened was I got a little cut on my head. Can't tell me God wasn't watching over us that day. No one can tell me God doesn't have a plan for me."

Somehow, the old farmhouse destroyed around them, the Ferrells survived. A pecan grove as old as the house was destroyed. Other hundred-plus year old oak and pine trees were gone.

The house, and almost everything in it, was blown away or destroyed.

All that remained was the carport, an oil tank, a chicken house, and a pump house.

"I never wavered in that God had a plan for me, and that in doing good the best I could all my life, I was being rewarded," Ferrell said. "So I could do more."

The toll from the Nov. 16 tornado that hit a two-mile stretch about 200 yards wide south of Rock Hill was breathtaking and brutal.

Three people were killed. Oran Steve Courtney of Williamson Road died when his chimney fell on him. Barbara and Charles Kenneth Hafner of S.C. 324 - who lived across the street from Jabo Ferrell's house - died when the storm ripped their mobile home from its foundation.

A dozen people were injured, eight homes were destroyed, and more than 20 other buildings damaged.

Nathan Courtney, who lost his father, Steve, in the storm said the family is still dealing with the devastation.

"One day at a time," Nathan Courtney said. "It has been very difficult. Nobody really felt like celebrating at Christmas."

Steve Courtney saved his daughter and granddaughter before he died.

The family has not decided about rebuilding the home. Because the economy is so rough the family's electric business has not re-opened. The outpouring of support from the Courtney's home church, Northside Baptist, and from others at Oakdale Baptist Church and many more in the community, has been a blessing, Nathan Courtney said.

"We are looking at the new year and hoping it will be better," he said. "It couldn't get any worse."

For Patricia Cox, whose mother and stepfather, Barbara and Charles Hafner, died in the storm the hope for the new year is that the family can recover from such a loss.

At Christmas she bought her 4-year-old son Ethan a "Cars 2" DVD because her mother had already bought one for him. Like so much of what the Hafners owned, the Christmas gift was destroyed in the storm.

"I put on there that it was from them, for Christmas, because it really was," Cox said. "This was a hard holiday season."

The tornado was the worst York County disaster of 2011 because of the loss of lives, said Cotton Howell, York County's longtime emergency management director. In terms of dollar damage and property damage, the spring storms caused more destruction. From Clover to Sharon, Hickory Grove to Rock Hill, hundreds of houses were damaged in the spring.

Yet in those storms that uprooted trees, clogged roads, knocked out power, damaged buildings, people survived.

"Roofs can be replaced," Howell said. "Lives can't. York County lost three people in the tornado. No one will ever forget them."

The dollar estimate for damage from the tornado has not been finalized because all property owners have not yet reported what they lost, Howell said.

Some residents were upset after the storm that York County did not use government heavy equipment and workers for jobs other than clearing roads and police protection, leaving private contractors to volunteer their heavy equipment to remove debris.

Source: http://www.heraldonline.com/2012/01/01/3630562/sc-tornado-victims-face-rebuilding.html

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