SANDERSON — Five months after a tornado struck the small community of Sanderson, damaging 25 structures and critically injuring one border patrol agent, those affected by the disaster are rebounding by working together to rebuild homes and businesses.
“Sanderson is so resilient,” Terrell County Judge Dale Carruthers said. “We’re picking ourselves up.”
Carruthers said those injured — around 12 individuals who were, for the most part, treated locally — are “on the road to recovery.” The border patrol agent, who was in his mobile home when it was hit by the tornado, is now with his family recovering and continuing rehabilitation, she said.
Detritus was shipped out, recycled, burned and taken to the local landfill. A temporary debris site, a lot on Legion Street, has finally been cleared. Just in time for Thanksgiving.
“To have that gone before the holidays was important, because it is not a normal scene here,” Carruthers said. “We didn’t want our community to be bogged down with something that would not bring happy memories to them. We wanted them to feel like we worked extra hard to get them to where we needed to be, and we met our goal.”
Resident Jake Harper, who operates Ferguson Motors, a cafe and event venue with wife Hannah, said business is finally returning back to normal. The back of their structure, the venue side, sustained serious damage from the storm.
“The tornado, of course, was a huge shock. It was devastating for us as a business, for a lot of people in town, but the rebuild has been as smooth as we could ask for given the circumstances,” Harper said. “It’s really been a mixed blessing. No one wishes for this stuff to happen, but I believe we’ve been able to rebuild the building and the venue in the back better than it was before.”
Front windows of Ferguson Motors that were blown out by the tornado have since been replaced. The historic structure’s old concrete walls and stage survived, but everything else was destroyed, prompting the Harpers to undergo nearly a complete rebuild.
“We ended up doing a whole new structure inside the old walls, a new steel structure, new roof, everything that comes with it, new doors, windows, power, everything,” Harper said.
Local artists whose works on view were damaged, or “sucked out of the building,” were quick to replenish their work, Harper said. Ferguson Motors raised over $20,000 via a GoFundMe. Harper said locals banded together to help the business get back on its feet.
“There was a huge community outpouring,” Harper said. “We had people donating their time, their money, their energy. There were people coming to help clean the place up. We were very lucky to get a lot of the contractors we needed here to do a lot of the large, heavy lifting and work.”
While “everything is in motion,” with some homeowners having started the reconstruction process, others are still waiting for contractors, Harper said.
Resident Beverley Evans, chair of the Terrell County Historical Commission, sustained damage to her home and offered The Big Bend Sentinel a list of “a few things I’ve learned” from the tornado strike. Among them are “the tarps on your damaged roof will never hold until the roof is repaired,” and “store copies of important documents away from your residence.”
Evans expressed gratitude for those who have helped her, and an eagerness to “plant many more trees” after the loss of Afghan pines and a Mediterranean Cypress near her home.
The population of remote Terrell County, which contains Sanderson and Dryden, is 760. Carruthers said the community’s resilience — apparent in the “roll up your sleeves and get things cleaned up type of an attitude” — comes from hardships associated with the locale.
“If you have to drive 64 miles to a store to get groceries, you tend to make due more than most,” Carruthers said.