One year later: Decatur residents reflect on progress after tornado
'We're celebrating and remembering a day that was terrible a year ago. We had just gone through the tornado, devastation on the east side, west side, south side of town, and we didn't know what to do,' Bob Tharp, the Mayor of Decatur, said. 'There's a lot of healing yet to be done.'
One resident, Rita Wilkins, has lived in Decatur for nearly thirty years. During the event, she recalled the unexpected hardship her family had faced over the past two years.
She says that first, it was a house fire in November of 2023.
'With the house fire, we lost a lot. We lost our home that we'd had for over 30 years. We had built the home in '89, and so it was devastating to lose that and to start over at our age,' Wilkins said.
A look at Rogers one year after deadly tornado
Wilkins says that after the fire, there was not much left. However, they picked up what was salvageable and packed it away in a shed on their property, in preparation for the day they'd rebuild. Yet just a couple of months later, the EF-3 tornado took all that remained.
'We had stored everything in like a shed there, like a garage. So, it actually took the roof off of that and destroyed that, and then it destroyed two of our chicken houses we had as well,' Wilkins said.
The damage to the Wilkins' property can still be seen one year later, but she says there's one thing that's kept her family standing.
'Jesus. Faith… Just the strong faith that I have, I believe we're going to get through it. I mean, it's going to take some time still,' Wilkins said.
The event concluded with Mayor Tharp reading a proclamation of remembrance. Residents impacted by the tornado were also invited to take home a tree seedling to replace their lost trees.
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