Vilonia students preserve lost items years after deadly tornado
VILONIA, Ark. – Students in Vilonia have been working to preserve items lost during the deadly tornado 10 years ago.
The nine-year-old memories of Abby Harper never left the woman now 19. The 2014 EF-4 tornado which stretched dozens of miles across Arkansas taking 16 lives in Pulaski, Faulkner, and White Counties took her Vilonia home.
Vilonia continues to heal after being hit by deadly EF-4 tornado 9 years ago
She remembers the water being sucked from the sink and toilet before she was hit in the head by debris. She woke up in her yard, carried half an acre away from the bathroom her family was cowering.
“I don’t ride roller coasters anymore because all the jerking scares me. I tell people I rode the biggest roller coaster that ever was,” Harper said.
Her whole street was left to rubble. Her next-door neighbors, Cameron and Tyler Smith died.
“My brother taught them how to play basketball,” she said.
The only thing left was the clothes on her families’ backs, but as places started coming back so did the little things.
Looking back to deadly 2014 tornado that ripped through Central Arkansas
For eight years, Erin Rappold and a hundred students who came through the EAST program at Vilonia High School restored items, contacted their owners, and if things couldn’t be returned, they archived them online.
“I want to get these back to the families,” Erin Rappold, Vilonia High School’s EAST teacher said.
Some larger items still await their owners because Rappold remembers how much a picture meant to the first woman she helped.
“The lady came up crying. She said that was her baby that she just lost after birth, and that was the only picture she had,” Rappold said.
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EAST students received 90,000 items sent from people in Arkansas, Missouri, and Tennessee. All but about 1,200 pictures and a few household items were returned to people, including Harper.
The pictures help her remember that terrible day and before she had any fear of storms.
“We had to grow up very, very fast, and this just shows a time before anything like a time when I never thought that was going to happen,” Harper said.
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