Caruthersville residents deep in the bootheel of Missouri are rounding the corner of the one year anniversary of the F3 tornado that ransacked their city. Fire Chief Charlie Jones says 37 of the original 100 trailers remain in the mobile home park FEMA set up after the disaster. He says another 63 mobile homes still rest on private property throughout Pemiscot County, but he says there were 160 last April. Jones says debris clean-up costs alone added up to about 650-thousand dollars.
But the fire chief says for the most part residents have been successful in turning the community back around. He says some residents have purchased property adjacent to their original land and have built bigger, more modern homes.
Jones says the tornado the community experienced last year was a rare one and weather experts don’t expect to see another one like it for another ten years.