果酱视频

ST. LOUIS 鈥� For the first time since a tornado ripped through the city three months ago, Delois Holmes' children gathered again at their mothers' home.

For years, her adult sons and their families had met there every Sunday for a meal, conversation and softball in the front yard.

But on this Sunday in late July, three of them stood on the cracked sidewalk of Cote Brilliante Avenue, outside the pile of debris that used to be their childhood home. Now, they were debating how to clear the rubble.

Delois and four other people died in the May 16 tornado that toppled trees, flattened homes and displaced hundreds of people.

"We're just traumatized," Delois' son, Rodney, said as he and his brothers sorted through the home's wreckage. "We didn't just lose our mom, we lost our house."

Three months after the tornado, the residents who remain still face a harsh choice. Do they take on the long, grueling and potentially fruitless task of rebuilding their homes, or do they abandon the neighborhoods they鈥檝e known for decades?

For many residents, the reality has begun to set in. On the streets where the tornado hit hardest, heaps of debris still line the curbs and people still sleep in their cars and tents outside of ruined homes.听

Some still cling to the hope that their homes 鈥� if not their neighborhood 鈥� can be rebuilt.听But many have already left, looking to start new lives elsewhere, doubting whether rebuilding is worth the effort.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has disbursed more than $31 million to affected residents so far. But even if residents do apply and are approved for federal aid, the money is often not enough to fully rebuild.听

The city is trying to offer additional help by setting aside $19 million for , and the state has pledged another $100 million.

North City over the decades has already witnessed historic population loss. May's tornado will only exacerbate the problem, potentially driving a new wave of people from North City 鈥� and maybe 果酱视频 entirely.

For the Holmes brothers, the Sunday visits to their mom's house tied them to the neighborhood. Now, after the tornado 鈥� with their mother and her home gone, along with most neighbors 鈥� they say there isn't much of a reason to stay.

They also wonder about the neighborhood's future, about losing the sense of community they grew up with. They are like other residents who say they don't want to be the only people left on their blocks.

鈥淚f we decided to do whatever to try to rebuild here, we鈥檇 be the only house here,鈥� said Rodney Holmes, standing in the small patch of his mother's front yard that wasn't littered with debris. 鈥淚t wouldn鈥檛 even be a community anymore. We鈥檇 still be standing on the corner looking around at all the wreckage.鈥�

'She almost made it'

As soon as she noticed the tornado moving onto her block, Delois ran for the basement.

She got halfway down the stairs before her home was flattened. Her son Reginald found her lying dead on the steps.

Today, only small parts of the house听鈥� a few purple-painted walls and a staircase听鈥斕齛re still standing. But those, too, have begun to cave in, and debris spills out from all sides.

The basement, though, is still intact.

鈥淭hat picture just plays over and over in my head, man,鈥� another son, Ronnie, said in a recent interview. 鈥淢ama was trying to get to that basement. She almost made it.鈥�

The brothers say Delois would want to see the home rebuilt. But even if they wanted to rebuild, they're not sure how it'd be done.

Delois, like a large number of her neighbors and other North City residents, didn't have insurance on her home. She was dropped by her insurance company just months before the tornado and didn't have the money to restart her coverage, her sons said.

Reginald still intends to apply for before the Aug. 26 deadline, but the money would likely not cover a rebuild.

He was the only brother听who still lived with Delois when the tornado hit.听He's now staying in a hotel in the county, paid for by the United Way.

Rodney still lives in the tornado zone with his wife, Zynthia 鈥� they live down the street from Delois' home, but the damage to their house wasn't bad enough to force them out immediately.

Now, they say it's harder for them to stay as the community around them disappears.

"Every day that we continue to live in this neighborhood, every day we wake up, you see more and more damage," Rodney said. "And you know our home, and this neighborhood 鈥� it's not going to be rebuilt."

On the day her husband and his brothers gathered at their mother's home, Zynthia waved her hand toward collapsed houses across the street. Many of the crumbled homes, she said, have only collapsed further since the tornado.听

"What's the point of staying when it looks like this?" she said. "What are you going to do? You're just going to live around all this brick and decay that's left for miles?"

Mayor Cara Spencer, though, has vowed to keep as many people in North City as possible. At a for tornado-affected residents last month, Spencer said her legacy as mayor would depend on how many people flee North City.

"We are committed to doing what we can to keep all of our residents here," she said. "I want my tenure as mayor to be marked, to be evaluated, on how many people we are able to keep here."

City officials hope that an infusion of cash into affected neighborhoods will be the key to getting people to stay. A mix of community, city and federal aid the past three months has helped with debris cleanup, temporary housing, home repairs and food drives.

Still, Reginald said he has no intention of returning.

He wasn't at his mother's home on the Sunday his brothers met there. It's too hard for him to return, he said, and there's no point if his mom isn't there.听

His main focus now is finding a new place to live on his own.

"I just need to get the hell out," he said.

'We just can't afford it'

In the weeks after the tornado destroyed her home in the Greater Ville neighborhood, Betty Mitchell hung onto the hope that she'd be able to rebuild.

Mitchell, 69, had lived in her two-story home on St. Ferdinand Avenue with her husband, Andrew, since 1996. She became friendly with her neighbors, stayed involved in the local church and raised her two daughters there.

But the house, and almost all of her personal items, were swept away when the tornado moved through her block, on a path that would intersect with Delois' house just moments later.

A pile of debris and a single standing wall is all that's left of Mitchell's home.

"If we didn't have this basement, we would've all been gone, too," she said. "Everything, the whole house, was just twisted up like some paper. Twisted up and thrown away."

Mitchell at first refused to leave. She and her husband pitched a tent in the backyard, collected what personal items they could and began to camp. They held out hope there would be enough aid to rebuild.

Mitchell and her husband don't have homeowner's insurance 鈥� it lapsed a few years ago when they finished paying off their house.

By the time they realized it was gone, they didn't have the money to restart it.

"They wanted $2,000 a month. I don't even have $2,000," she said. "And so I decided I wasn't going to worry myself. Whatever happened, happened.

"And then this happened," she said, pointing to her ruined home.

Mitchell isn't different than many of her neighbors. A Post-Dispatch analysis in May found that on some blocks hit by the tornado, as many as 80% of households weren't insured.

Residents hoped outside aid could help cover what they couldn't get from insurance.

But FEMA officials have made clear that federal aid is only intended as supplemental 鈥� not a replacement for insurance.

A FEMA inspector eventually arrived at Mitchell's house in mid-June to inspect it 鈥� the first step to getting approved for federal money. The damage was so great, Mitchell said, the inspector told her any available FEMA aid wouldn't be enough to rebuild her home.

"He said, 'Oh my goodness, you really need help bad,'" she said, slightly laughing. "I said, 'Oh yeah I do.'"

By that point, though, neighbors Mitchell had known for decades were starting to pack up and leave. Homes emptied out. Next door, contractors began razing her neighbor's house; the owner decided that keeping it standing wasn't worth the hassle.听

Mitchell was one of the only people left on her block.

She eventually got about $43,000 from FEMA 鈥� more money at once than she's ever seen, she said, but it was too late. A month of waiting, watching her neighbors leave and praying for a miracle had already pushed her to giving up on her home.

"I don't see anybody else's house on this block being fixed at all," she said. "We just can't afford it."

Mitchell collected her and her husband's belongings from the backyard and moved into her daughter's house in the county. Shortly after, she used the FEMA money to buy a new house in the Vandeventer neighborhood and began moving in.听

She doesn't know what she'll do with her old property, though she has no intention of investing any money into it. Mitchell has given up on the neighborhood, too.

"I really wanted to stay. I thought in the beginning there would be more help," she said. "But now, no, I really don't want to live here anymore. It was quiet for me, but after all this happened, I just don't want to think about it."

Determined to stay

Many of the homes along Cottage Avenue resemble those dotted throughout the Greater Ville since the tornado 鈥� abandoned, in ruins or being demolished.

But at the end of the street, a single house stands out. For the past three months, it's bustled with activity.

A daily swarm of contractors push wheelbarrows, hammer on the roof, build听in the backyard and drag away debris.

In the summer heat, the house has become almost unlivable for its 74-year-old owner, Darnell Forest. The tornado ripped off the entire front of the home, and rain damaged everything inside.

But instead of taking the "easy way," as he calls it, Forest decided to stay. He wasn't going to move into a hotel or leave his home, like many of his neighbors. And he's stayed determined since, hiring contractors to repair the house.

"I'm going to sit right here so I can watch the progress," he said on a hot day in July, sitting under a newly built car park in his backyard.

Temperatures that day reached the mid-90s, enough to drive anyone indoors听鈥� but not Forest. Instead, he set up five box fans throughout the yard to create a nest of cold air behind his house.

Sitting back there, it didn't feel much hotter than 70 degrees.

"You think I got enough fans?" he said, laughing.

Sometime in the 34 years Forest has lived in the home, people in the neighborhood began calling him "HardTimez." He's not sure how he got the nickname, but his resolve for the past three months has proved it a fitting moniker.

The day after the tornado, he began shopping for help. He conscripted local community members to help deliver food to his home, handed to him through the gaping hole in the front of the house.

Forest looked for every cent of aid he could 鈥� a couple thousand dollars from the Northside Resilience Fund, a few hundred from nonprofits and churches, a small amount from the Red Cross, money here and there from good Samaritans and friends.

He's attended almost every city-hosted town hall to ask questions and take advantage of every program available. When applications for FEMA aid opened in June, he was one of the first to apply, getting about $17,000 from the agency, he said.

He doesn't have insurance, so available help is all he's had to rely on.

All of the money, he said, has gone to paying for contractors and building materials. And by the time August rolled around, progress was going well. The front of the home had been largely rebuilt 鈥� he's proud to point out that he has a front door and window again.

"I don't care what aid they give me or don't," he said. "I'm still going to do the best I can."

Forest's neighbors apparently haven't听had the same luck听鈥� or the same resolve. Up and down the street, Forest has noticed the homes emptying.

He wouldn't be surprised if he were the only one left.

"That'd be nice, wouldn't it?" he joked. "Wouldn't have no nosey neighbors. Can't call the city on me."

His smile faded and he shook his head.

"No, I don't want to lose them," he said. "But it's been like this since even before the tornado. People leave. What am I going to do about it? This place is just deteriorated."

Forest said he thinks his neighbors haven't been as successful as he has because they don't know about the aid available to them. That's despite efforts by the city and community groups 鈥� through meetings, door-knocking, lawn signs and other methods 鈥� to reach people about available aid.

But the resources available are scattered, require paperwork and not always easy to differentiate. Not many of Forest's neighbors have the time or resources to sort through websites and attend town halls like he does, he said.

Even with all the help he's received, though, Forest said he doesn't think it will ever be enough to repair his home.

"It's nice to have, it's helpful," he said, "but it won't do everything."

Even though it's been largely repaired 鈥� a new car park in the backyard, a front door and fixes to his roof 鈥斕鼺orest has accepted that the home, and the neighborhood around him, won't be the same as before.听

The help he has received, though, has made it easier to face that change.

"I wouldn't have been able to have this done without no helping hands," he said. "I feel so blessed to have them because I couldn't do it without this community, man."