Residents of the areas hit hardest by Friday's tornado in Van Buren and Conway counties were gathering up the pieces of their shattered homes Monday and seeing what could be saved.
Lilbert Parish, 90, was in his home with daughter Melba Barge and a caregiver on Sulfur Road just north of Damascus when the tornado hit.
"We don't have an inside closet or anything," Barge said as family and volunteer workers cleared the rubble that was once her father's home. "But (Parish) always said if the weather gets bad to get in this one corner of the house, because that was the safest spot."
As it turned out, Parish was right. As the house collapsed around them, Barge said, the three found themselves in "a cocoon" from which there were rescued dry and unharmed by emergency workers.
Now all that's left is to clear the wreckage and, for some, to build again.
Since the storm passed Friday morning, volunteers of every description have offered to help. Many have come with church groups or businesses, and many have just come on their own to work for a few hours.
"There have really been so many there's no way we could have a list of them ready right now," Van Buren Rescue Squad volunteer Elizabeth Hess said.
If there is a good side to such a disaster, Hess said, it would be the outpouring of support from throughout the state.
Though it's far from an extensive list, Hess said volunteers have included members of Calvary Baptist Church in Clinton, Bee Branch Baptist Church and Mount Olive Baptist Church in Guy who have been preparing and delivering food to workers and those whose homes have been destroyed, First Security Bank employees who have brought and prepared food, Woodmen of the World members and Mennonites from several parts of the state and Missouri who have been doing anything asked of them, workers from the natural gas industry and the dozens who have come on their own and asked what they could do.
"And you wouldn't believe all the contractors that have been coming here with bulldozers and tractors and people to help," Damascus Fire Chief Danny Mahan added.
The American Red Cross and Salvation Army have also been active in the areas, and soldiers from the Arkansas National Guard are keeping watch over the disaster area.
Again, Hess said, the full list has not been compiled, but businesses including Nabholz, Seeco, Western Sizzlin, Home Foods, Hugg and Hall, Wise El Santo safety equipment, McDonalds, Kroger and Onda-Lay Pipe Co. have all pitched in in some form.
In coming days, Mahan said, as many as 600 Harding University students and faculty members are expected to come and volunteer to clear debris and wind-blown trash from stricken parts of the counties.
"They tell me that when they're done, other than the trees, you won't be able to tell anything had happened," he said.
Hess' church, First Baptist Church in Damascus, has served three meals a day for victims and workers in its fellowship hall, and has set up a relief command post in the gym, where donations of food, clothing and household items are accepted.
Freddy Williams of Conway, Parish's son-in-law, summed it up this way while taking a break from clearing rubble:
"It's one of those things that happen in life and we don't have any control over it, but something good will come out of it."
(Staff writer Joe Lamb can be reached by e-mail at joe.lamb@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1238. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit)
