BROOKVILLE, Indiana — At Big Boyz Pizza shop, Crystal Cloyd was the only one on the clock when the first big order came in.
“It was kind of overwhelming,” she said. “But I knew it was for a good cause.”
The man placing the order was 80 miles away, but the delivery was just a few minutes down the road.
“I took chicken and water and cups [and] bathroom stuff because everybody’s got to go to the bathroom,” Cloyd said.
The food was for the Hickory Woods Campground, which is rebuilding after an EF-1 tornado damaged 40 out of 150 campers.
“We’re not where we want to be,” resident Tim Emberton said, “but we’re a lot farther ahead than we thought we would be.”
In a week’s time, the front roads have been clear, dumpsters are filling up and burn piles are still smoldering.
The campground has been trying to obtain estimates for equipment that can help clear the immense amount of brush. Even after a week of permitted open fires, there’s still a lot to clear.
"(A Hamilton company said), 'Hey could come in and start removing the brush but it's $20,000 a week. It takes approximately 4 weeks and we can't afford that out of our budget,'" Emberton said. “Insurance probably won't pay for that."
Franklin County Emergency Management Director Amy Lindsey said there hasn’t been a twister like last week’s in the four years she’s been here.
“We had an Indiana Department of Transportation building that was wiped away into an elderly lady's home,” Lindsey said. The wind was so powerful that it lifted a dumpster off the IDOT site into the air so high that it broke a second-story window."
Lindsey said they've reached out to community-based and faith-based organizations to see if they can get any help.
“They've come in here, they've cut down trees, they've hauled off debris, they've taken scrap metal to the recycling center," Lindsey said. "So they've just really helped people feel a sense of getting back to normal.”
The Small Business Administration will tour the county next week, Lindsey said. The Indiana Department of Homeland Security assessed the damage and believed the county would qualify for SBA relief.
To qualify for the relief, the county has to “have to have a loss of 40% damage to 25 or more properties in your community,” Lindsey said.
A local relief fund has also been established through the Franklin County Community Foundation to help make sure people who are impacted have what they need.
