Community Spirit Brings Hope to Camilla

Looking at the heap of broken boards and furniture that used to be his home, a resident of tornado-ravaged Camilla could only shrug. "I guess that's what happens when one man has too much," he said. His words revealed the spirit of this working-class trailer park community--people here don't bemoan their material losses, they just feel lucky to be alive. But although Camilla's residents may take the loss of possessions from the deadly February 14 tornadoes in stride, the disaster's emotional toll is what most concerns disaster relief workers.

With a population of about 7,000, the mental impacts of the disaster will weigh heavily on the tiny town of Camilla. It seems like almost everybody knows someone who either lost a home or who was injured in the storm. Others have multiple family members who are still in the hospital. The toll will be heaviest, however, on those whose loved ones were killed in the tornadoes.

Mitchell County buried the first of 11 tornado victims on Wednesday, with a community memorial service for all the victims planned for Thursday. "The number of deaths really make this bad.... There's going to be some real serious mental health needs because of the fatalities," said Don Stephens, emergency services manager for the American Red Cross in Georgia. Across four rural, working-class counties--Mitchell, Grady, Colquitt, and Tift--in southern Georgia, there were as many as 19 fatalities.

Red Cross mental health experts are in the disaster zone helping families to cope with the trauma. Red Cross mental health specialist Fred Dornback said that emotions will run highest at the end of the week when the rain that is predicted washes away or ruins the valuables residents have been unable to find. "The other thing is when the bulldozers come. Then they truly have to face that there's no home and that all their personal momentos are gone," he said.

But Dornback predicts that despite the heavy losses, the tornado-stricken community has the strength to recover from the emotional pains. "This is such a close knit community. The closeness will get them through this," Dornback said. Already, neighbors and friends are helping tornado survivors, sifting through debris piles to salvage belongings and offering emotional support.

Timing Contributes to High Death Toll
The Valentine's Day tornadoes whipped into southern Georgia at the worst possible time. At least two twisters tore through the same small town of Camilla within an hour. The first tornado registered F3 on the Fujita scale. The second one was either an F1 or an F2. They came in the darkness, long after many people had turned off their televisions and gone to bed. Most of Mitchell County was asleep when the National Weather Service broadcast its first tornado warnings at 11:18 p.m.--40 minutes before the first one touched down.

People were literally jolted from sleep and, therefore, too shocked to react to the violent winds that tore at their homes. "You didn't even have time to get scared. I just hollered," said Charlyne Jackson, sifting through the mass of debris that used to be her home.

Mitchell County has no siren warning system, and Camilla's sirens couldn't be heard where the tornadoes delivered the brunt of their damage, 911 directory Jim Kelly told Reuters. As a result, a staggering 19 people died across the twisters' rural route--the largest number of fatalities from a tornado in Georgia since 1936 when 204 people died in Hall and Franklin counties. As many as 200 were injured, with many still in the hospital, and as many as 350 homes were damaged or destroyed.

To make matters worse, the funnels ironically swept through the most fragile of neighborhoods in the sparsely populated county. Disaster assessments by federal disaster teams showed that about half of the affected homes were trailers, and many of those who were killed lived in them. In one trailer park of 100 homes, only two are still inhabitable. Shelia Williams was one of the lucky ones. Miraculously, her trailer home survived the storms intact. "Everybody's trailer was just blowing into mine," she said.

Four days have passed since the residents of Camilla went to sleep unaware of the dangers lurking outside their doors. Although shaken violently from their dreams, it will take a long time for them to wake up from the nightmare that only just began when terrifying twisters flattened large swaths of this small town. "I guess people are just devastated, just in shock and I guess it hasn't really hit them," Jackson said, later adding, "Hopefully we'll get everything cleaned up.... Hopefully we'll rebuild."