Governor tours tornado-hit city, finds it on mend
Posted on Friday, July 6, 2007
DUMAS — If it weren’t for the fireplace and the brick frame standing alone in a yard, it would be hard to tell with the naked eye that a tornado cut through the Lennox Circle neighborhood in Dumas four months ago.
Gone are the splintered houses with caved-in ceilings, the scattered debris and the tearful homeowners. Damaged homes have, for the most part, been repaired, while residences that fared worse have been cleared from their lots.
“Looks a whole lot different than it did a few months ago,” Gov. Mike Beebe told Marlin and Kay Pennington during a tour of the Dumas neighborhood Thursday.
The couple recently moved back into their home at 8 Lennox Circle after repairing the roof and the back wall.
The governor said he was visiting Dumas to assess recovery efforts and to assure residents that the state hasn’t forgotten them. In that vein, he presented a $ 250, 000 check to Delta Memorial Hospital, which has reported a drop in revenue since the Feb. 24 tornado savaged this southeast Arkansas city of 5, 000 people.
The twister destroyed 25 businesses, leaving roughly 800 people out of work, and either destroyed or damaged nearly 100 homes, including about a dozen in the Lennox Circle neighborhood. The Penningtons said they vacated their Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer two weeks ago to return to their house.
“It’s going pretty good,” Marlin Pennington said of the recovery effort. “We still don’t have all of our furniture yet. We’re still trying to replace what we lost.”
Across the street, Ward 4 Alderman Roy Dalton emerged from his FEMA trailer to greet Beebe as the governor arrived with news cameras and reporters in tow. In front of Dalton’s trailer sits the fireplace, prompting the governor to ask the alderman if he intends to leave it there. Dalton said later that he is considering turning the fireplace into a barbecue pit.
Dalton, who owns two adjacent lots, said he will replace his home on Lennox Circle and monitor progress from his FEMA trailer. As of Thursday morning, the concrete foundation had been laid for the home, although Dalton said poor weather had slowed construction.
While nearby homes and businesses bore the brunt of the storm’s fury, the hospital on U. S. 65 escaped relatively unscathed. However, Delta Memorial has witnessed a 50 percent increase in patients without insurance — from about 10 percent of total patients before the storm to upward of 15 percent in its wake, said Jim Fairchild, the hospital administrator.
The uncompensated care — a result of a higher post-tornado unemployment rate — has cut severely into the nonprofit hospital’s revenue, Fairchild said.
“After tornadoes struck Desha County in February, I said that Arkansas would take care of our own,” Beebe said before presenting the $ 250, 000 check, which came from the Governor’s Disaster Fund.
“The folks at Delta Memorial Hospital have been taking care of storm victims for more than four months, oftentimes without compensation,” the governor continued. “We want to ensure that they can continue providing these vital health-care services in the future.”
Previously, Beebe released $ 560, 000 from the disaster fund to assist victims of the February tornadoes in Desha, Union, Drew and Bradley counties, according to a press release from the governor’s office. In addition, the U. S. Small Business Administration has approved $ 3. 3 million in low-interest disaster loans to 26 homeowners and 13 businesses in Desha and Lincoln counties, according to Charmagne Husmann, a representative of the Small Business Administration in Sacramento, Calif.
Dumas Mayor Marion Gill offered his thanks to Beebe on behalf of the Desha County city.
“We couldn’t have done it without you,” Gill said. “And to us, the best way I think I can say that is to say: To us, you are a ‘ ding dong daddy. ’”
After presenting the check and touring Lennox Circle, Beebe went to a young girls softball game south of downtown, where he took pictures with the players.
“It was exciting, very exciting,” said Robin Dendy, whose 7-year-old daughter, Raeleigh, played for the Dumas club, named the Southern Twisters.
“All these little girls just stopped and stared” when the governor arrived, Robin Dendy said.
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