One day after deadly Harrisburg, Ill., tornado, town begins to rebuild

HARRISBURG, ILL. — Jesse Raymer was asleep when the sky opened above his bed. A couple hours before dawn Wednesday, a monster tornado snapped a tree at the base and sent it crashing through the wall of his bedroom, knocking into his bedpost. A window broke as he sprang from the bed. His dog, Chauncey, sleeping nearby, jumped up, too.

Raymer ran to the bathroom across the hall to find shelter with Chauncey at his side. As he opened the door, the beast from above peeled the roof off his one-story home. Debris, wind and rain poured into the bathroom.

Deciding to head for the basement, he fumbled his way through the living room, tripping over a small table and knocking over a piano stool.

“Well, I was in a hurry,” he said Thursday. “It chased me.”

He didn’t have time to get dressed before his flight to safety, so he found clothes in the basement and waited out the storm. That’s when he realized Chauncey was missing.

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Across the Midwest, 12 people were killed in the Wednesday storms. Six were found in a two-block wide swath of destruction in Harrisburg, Ill., a small town about four hours from Bloomington.

Twenty-four hours after the storm, generators whined everywhere. State and county officers patrolled the streets, checking for work permits and looking for looters. Insurance agents were already going door to door to collect claims information and assess damage.

Fiberglass insulation blanketed streets, sidewalks, lawns and porches like fine lace. Broken glass and splintered shards from trees and homes were scattered everywhere. Metal fence posts were bent like wet noodles.

Raymer, who spent Thursday cleaning, knew he was one of the lucky ones. Not only had his life been spared, but he had been reunited with Chauncey.
 
A few hours after the storm had passed, the dog came back home to Raymer’s doorstep.

Thursday morning, insulation and shreds of roof still littered Raymer’s house and yard on Roosevelt Street, south of town.

City officials have placed a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew in Harrisburg to reduce looting, and storms were expected overnight.
 
Raymer’s biggest goal, however, was not to clean up outside, but inside.

Next to his home, Raymer has a small space where he had once operated a beauty salon.

Anything Raymer was able to move to the salon would be saved.

Anything left in the home would be at the mercy of the rains expected Thursday night.
Denise Raymer, Jesse’s sister-in-law, had driven from Bloomington, Ill., about four and a half hours north of Harrisburg, to help Jesse and his mother, Loeva Raymer, clean up after the tornado.

“You may need to choose what you want the most, try to cover up the rest with plastic,” Denise said.
 
As they went through the items in Jesse’s house, everyone helped out. Jesse and Denise packed boxes while Loeva, 88, carried items without as much damage to the salon.

***

As they organized inside, a group of students from Harrisburg High School and Southeastern Illinois College moved from house to house on Roosevelt Street to help clean away branches and lend a hand.

Down the street, another group tried to remove a tree that had been knocked onto an electric wire.

In another area, a whole strip mall had been flattened. A small pond near the Walmart was full of shopping carts and other debris.

A pile of broken wood and brick lay sprawled in a small field just off the highway.

“That used to be a church,” Darlene Goolsby said, surveying the damage  just before dawn.

Goolsby lives in an area of town not devastated by the storm.

She is the coordinator of the local office of the Golden Circle, a group that helps area seniors receive food and medical care.

The offices, which are housed in a few buildings across from the destroyed church, were partially demolished by the tornado.

“We’ve got part of our kitchen left,” Goolsby said. “I just don’t know how I’ll feed my seniors.”

Early that morning, she arrived alone at the site. She took her time walking around the debris to see it a little better, trying to find where to begin.

A red Kia sedan was resting where a wall used to be. Goolsby could point out the general area where her office had once stood, but there was no way to tell for sure what had survived the storm.

Her biggest fear was the loss of the agency’s important files.

Somewhere in that pile of matches was important information about prescriptions and other medical information.

The office serves anywhere from 100 to 120 seniors every day, providing home-delivered meals, adult day care and other services.

By midday, a team of volunteers had descended on the site. A hydraulic crane helped move massive piles of debris.

Soon after the crane went to work, the files were found and moved to a safer location.

The local Masonic Lodge offered space to help the agency get back on its feet.
 
Other Golden Circle offices from neighboring counties pitched in and helped check on the seniors usually served by the Harrisburg office.

Goolsby was standing to the side as the crane pulled out more and more pieces of insulation and broken roof.
 
Then Jeffrey Goolsby, her husband, shouted from the top of the debris pile and held a photograph high in the air.

“Hey, Darlene!” he shouted, showing off the photograph.

She immediately started jumping up and down, cheering and clapping.

It was a photo of her grandchildren that she had kept on her desk. She thought she had lost it.

Under the piles of trash and twisted waste, she had found her office.

“We found that photo just like it was brand new,” Darlene said.

The crane was turned off, and volunteers ran onto the pile to begin digging with their hands.

Before long, she found all of her photographs, a handful of office supplies, a box of files and other parts of her desk.

“Is that my desk calendar?” she said, sorting through the trash. “Yeah, I’ve gotta have that.”

She even found the brand-new computer she had not even had time to open before the storm.

All the salvageable items were placed in a large white cooler.

By the end of the search, Darlene’s entire office fit in the cooler.

Jefferey picked up the cooler and carried Darlene’s office away. There wasn’t much left, but she was thankful for every photograph she found of her grandchildren.

“There are a lot of little miracles around here today.”