Rebuilding homes & restoring faith in tornado-ravaged Dawson Springs
DAWSON SPRINGS, Kentucky — Scorching hot air whips through the open windows of Katie Moyer’s white pickup truck, ruffling papers and notes on the front seat beside her. It’s the closest thing she’s got to air-conditioning in this rolling symbol of hope that regularly traverses the bumpy streets of this small town.
When she’s not driving from project to project as the Fuller Center Disaster ReBuilders’ Operations Director in Kentucky, she usually has her cell phone in hand so that she can quickly respond to the nonstop dings and rings of text messages and calls.
Many people have sought help since a violent EF-4 tornado rampaged through Western Kentucky on December 10, 2021, killing 14 residents of this tight-knit small town and destroying 75 percent of the homes in the community. Those needs were compounded when another tornado, a powerful EF-3, tore through northern parts of the Dawson Springs area again a few weeks ago on the Sunday before Memorial Day.
“I heard a lot of, ‘What did we do to deserve this?’” Moyer said of the second tornado. “I understand the sentiment.”
Fortunately, there are 34 stationary symbols of hope in the area — homes that the Fuller Center Disaster ReBuilders have built with the willing hands of hundreds of volunteers who continue to stream into the community to serve and with the strong support of every corner of the Dawson Springs community.
“They’re really unlucky … or they are lucky because they’ve got a lot of people helping,” volunteer Melissa Michael said as she enjoyed a moment of air-conditioning while working inside of what will soon be the 35th completed home. “We feel real bad for them. We’ve had tornadoes at home, but nothing like this.”
The 34 homes (and counting) are complemented by the hope provided by local residents who have been helped by the Disaster ReBuilders and who are now paying it forward by helping their neighbors get the same kind of hand-up that changed their own lives. Many of those Disaster ReBuilders homeowner partners rushed in to help fellow residents after this latest twister, including Deborah Rose.
“We lost our home in the 2021 tornado,” Rose said. “We lost everything we had — our home, vehicles, outbuildings, the whole nine yards. We had so much help from the 2021 tornado, and I just kind of wanted to pay it forward and do something to help.”
Rose is now a fixture at the volunteer command center based inside Landmark Apostolic Church. Like several others, her job is to help connect those in need with those delivering support services. However, she also believes she is in a unique position to offer hope as a Fuller Center homeowner who celebrated a year in her new home about a month before the second tornado struck others.
“I always tell people that come in here to the volunteer command center that have had this trouble now that there is a light at the end of the tunnel for everyone,” she said. “You may not see it today or tomorrow, but it’s there.”
“On day one, the morning after the tornado I was surrounded by tornado survivors from the last tornado who came out and started helping immediately,” Moyer said. “They were out helping clear trees out of driveways, helping hold down the fort, running operations for volunteers and serving their community. They said they just wanted to pay it forward.”
Other faces of hope come from outside the Dawson Springs community in the form of hundreds of Disaster ReBuilders volunteers who have continuously streamed in to help since early 2022.
Several volunteers were in town last week from a pair of Lutheran churches in the Chicago suburbs — Peace Lutheran Church of Lake Zurich and The Living Lord Lutheran of Bartlett.
“When you have disasters like tornadoes or floods, so much of the rebuilding is done by volunteers,” said Peace Lutheran’s Bill Koenig, who has been serving in disaster recovery since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005. “It’s really important to get people back in their homes as quickly as possible. It takes a long time, but it’s important to get them back. So, we serve them.”
As with so many people who serve with Fuller Center programs, Koenig insists that volunteers are the ones whose spirits are lifted by helping those in need.
“We hear stories of survival, of strength, of endurance, of tenacity to get back into their homes,” Koenig said. “It’s really beneficial for our members to hear that. We take home those stories. Part of the healing process when you go through something like this is being able to tell your story. Part of our process is to hear those stories.”
Moyer invites more volunteers to keep houses going up — and to keep hearing and sharing those stories of perseverance.
“There’s plenty of work to do,” she said. “We’ve still got houses to build, and we’ve still got a disaster to clean up after.”
If you would like to learn more about volunteering with the Fuller Center Disaster ReBuilders, visit fullercenter.org/disaster-rebuilders or disaster-rebuilders.org.
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