More Than a Memory

When disaster struck in the tiny town of Mayfield on Dec. 10, not only were 80 Kentuckians’ lives lost, but a small town was changed forever. An EF4 tornado ripped through the heart of the city that night, taking out residential neighborhoods and much of the downtown area. The devastation of the town left many of its residents in need of desperate emergency relief efforts. Gov. Andy Beshear leapt into action, ensuring that the citizens in the tornado’s destructive path got help as soon as possible.

“These tornadoes were the most devastating in our state's history. With a tornado like that, the guard is needed and ready. Where it starts is I sign a state of emergency, which I did right as the storms were rolling in, which gives us the ability to call them out,” said Beshear.

The Emergency Declaration signed by Beshear immediately mobilized the Kentucky National Guard to the affected areas to assist in search and rescue. In the coming weeks, the Guard would play a large role in helping the town build back in the immediate aftermath of one of the most devastating weather events to hit the area in recent memory. Those efforts would include helping to run recovery centers and hand out food, as well as assisting in the clean up in the initial weeks.

Stepping into Mayfield in February, nearly two months after the storms, the most profound attribute of the affected area is its emptiness. The only people to be found amidst the destruction are workers, and there were not many of them. Although there are few people, the air is full of the noise of generators and equipment as front-loaders fill dump trucks with debris. The homes and businesses that once populated the city center are blown-out shells of buildings. Many of the more heavily damaged buildings have been demolished, leaving only their foundations. In the very center of downtown, the City Hall is fenced off, having lost the clock tower and most of its roof. Some of the decorations from Christmas are still strewn around the outside of the fence perimeter.

Many residents of Mayfield are still not able to return to their homes months after the disaster. Over 280,000 cubic yards of debris had already been removed from the town by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Louisville District, but there’s still a long way to go. Chamar Woods, who lived just a few blocks from where the tornado hit, has worked in the recovery cleanup downtown since the initial destruction. Woods currently stays in a motel in nearby Murray. While his temporary housing was initially funded and paid for, funding for his stay at the motel eventually ran out, and he was forced to use his own funds.

Woods noted a declining presence of Guardsmen in the Mayfield area in the passing months of the tornado.

“We have worked 16-hour shifts on the cleanup. When the tornado first happened, the Guard had lots of setups for people who were in need, but I have not seen them around here recently,” said Woods in a February interview.

Though many of the Guardsmen had been sent to other areas to assist folks around Western Kentucky, some still remained at a supply distribution center at the fairgrounds in Mayfield.

The distribution center is housed at the Mayfield-Graves County Fairgrounds, in a large warehouse near a field which, before the tornado, served as the town's soccer complex. The warehouse was filled with supplies that spanned every inch of available space inside, with another warehouse stocked full beside it. Outside the warehouses, rows and rows of bottled water sent from all over the United States were stored in shipping containers. Those in need were able to walk through with shopping carts and take what they needed. Sgt. Cat Collins and Guardsmen Nathan Lowe and Robert Buck, three of the last five Guardsmen stationed in Mayfield, were helping to run the center. Sgt. Collins, who has been in the Guard for 12 years, is from Livingston. Lowe is from Elizabethtown, Kentucky and Buck is from Lyon County.

“Really, most of our staff and our personnel, which was about 58 guardsmen, were helping with control points in the city since there were lots of looters. We had some guys also doing some health and welfare checks, but the initial mission we had was the movement of people to safe areas, which took place in the snow and rain” Collins said.

The kind of assistance provided by the Guard in getting supplies to those who are still without permanent housing will probably still be necessary for a long time to come, as almost four months after the disaster, progress on the cleanup is still at a snail's pace. But Sgt. Livingston was excited for the progress Mayfield had made so far in getting closer to normal.

“People's morale is higher. There is somewhat of a community feeling again here, just in a different way. So I have high hopes, and I think within the next couple months everything won't be rebuilt, because that will take years, but I think we are a lot closer to normalcy than we were back in December,” Collins said.

The guardsmen at the relief center have been working under the direction of Sandy Delk, a manager for the Mayfield Graves County Parks Department. Sandy has been running the recovery center since the day it opened, at times sleeping in her car so that she could always be available if someone needed help. She was pleased with the assistance the National Guard had given them there.

“The National Guard was a great help; they loaded and unloaded supplies into the center and brought equipment. All of them helped, and really getting to know them on a personal level, they are much more than just another person in uniform,” Delk said.

While massive amounts of supplies keep pouring into the recovery center, Delk mentioned that the recovery center run will be open for as long as assistance is needed in Mayfield.

“We were the first ones open, and we will be the last place to close. We are a poor town here, and the people that were hurting before are hurting worse now,” said Delk in February.

To this day, the recovery center is still open and serving people in Mayfield. But Delk knows that the people of Mayfield are still going to need assistance as they move forward.

“We know people are going to forget about us (when the next disaster happens).... But don’t forget us too soon. We are not ready for people to forget about us,” Delk said.