“It sounded like a jet was coming toward us – I remember feeling pressure and then my ears popped. I couldn’t hear anything for a split second – I could only see the fear in my family’s face from the light of my cell phone. Everything was shaking and while I am sure it only lasted a couple of minutes, it felt like that went on for a lifetime. I remember screaming for my Momma and praying, ‘please God don’t take my family.’ And then all of a sudden everything stopped and it felt like our house was just dropped.”
These are the terrifying moments Mary Hale describes as an F4 tornado rolled across their Marshall County home as she and 12 other family members – six adults and seven children ranging in age from 11 days to 11 years old, huddled in their tiny bathroom seeking shelter under blankets and a mattress.
**photo of kids seeking shelter in the bathroom
“My hearing came back and the sound of screaming children and debris hitting my house-those are sounds I will never forget. I was so scared to come out of the bathroom knowing everything was gone. I remember my youngest son kept yelling, ‘Momma don’t look’, because water was pouring into the house and there was broken glass everywhere.”
Not knowing what else to do, Hale says she decided to call 9-1-1 where the operator overheard what they believed to be gas spewing, advising her to evacuate the house immediately.
“It was pitch black outside so we were limited to what our eyes could see. No one could have gotten to us.” Hale said her friend, Chris, took action and loaded everyone up in a truck and SUV, both damaged by the storm but drivable. “We were having to jump ditches and drive over fallen trees and downed powerlines. The windows were busted out and the rain was pouring in so hard it felt like glass hitting us in the face.”
After meeting family members and being taken to safety, Hale recalls finally laying her head down around 3 a.m. – but no one slept much that night. Telling of the morning after, she revisits the rush of emotion she felt when she pulled into her driveway. “This was my dream. I had only owned my own home for 17 months and all of a sudden, I was looking at it and realizing my dream was gone.”
*photos of damage to their home
Fighting back welling emotion she added, “I have been a single mom to three boys for a long time and we have gone from place to place to place, rental to rental since they were little. I finally had the opportunity to make a change in my role at the hospital, make a little more money, and finally was able to have something that was ours.” Seventeen months later, Hale found herself standing in the front yard of the place where her dreams once stood, watching heavy equipment roll in to tear it all down.
*photo of Mary Hale with her sons and grandsons
Starting over has not been easy. Like so many others, Hale would soon learn she was very much underinsured, realizing she was not going to be able to afford to rebuild. “It was a total loss, so when my insurance paid out, they gave me $129,000 and after I paid off my mortgage, which was $96,000, I had $33,000 left to try to start over. “It’s really hard to try to replace everything you owned for $33,000 and also try to rebuild a home,” she added.
Hale was one of the families who moved into a cottage at Moors Resort while she worked to put her family’s life back together. She and her boys will be there until March 1 but afterward, they will need to find a more permanent solution.
Unable to rebuild her home, Hale says she has put a down payment on a mobile home but said she is finding that most banks do not want to loan money on this type of housing.
“I have applied for a low interest loan through the Small Business Administration but have yet to hear anything back and some of the finance options through the mobile home place are so high I am not sure I can afford the payment.”
It was during this whole process that Hale began to try to continue moving forward when she discovered there was an issue with the septic tank on her land. “When they demoed the house they could not find the septic to cap it.” After having the septic tank located and the site inspected, it was determined that the 200 gallon makeshift setup would need to be fully replaced with a minimum of a 1,000 gallon capacity, fully functional, septic system.
The original estimate for this came in at around $10,000, although, through competitive bidding, that price was almost cut in half. “All I had was $33,000 and I had just put $10,000 down on my mobile home, replaced all of the water pipes, and then this came up,” Hale said. “I just kept deducting and deducting and knew I was not going to have anything left.”
Desperate to try to find assistance, Hale had heard about the Marshall County Non-Profit Foundation and their efforts to assist storm victims. She reached out to Benton City Mayor Rita Dotson, who was ready and willing to lend a helping hand.
**photo of the board – there is a vertical and horizontal, use whichever would look best in the layout
Dotson, along with three others – Calvert City Mayor Gene Colburn, Hardin Mayor Randall Scott, and Commonwealth Attorney Dennis Foust, all serve on the board of the Marshall County Non-profit Foundation, with Foust serving as board chair. The non-profit account was created about a decade ago by former Marshall County Attorney Jeff Edwards to provide a non-profit option for fundraising and charitable efforts in the community.
The night of December 10, 2022, Dotson recalls getting in her vehicle and driving the roads after the storm had passed. “Governor Beshear was calling and texting me that evening asking how we were and what he could do to help but it was so dark I couldn’t see much – all I knew to tell him was that it was bad.”
As daylight broke and damage assessments began, Dotson recalls the feeling of helplessness begin to set in. “We knew Mayfield was hit really hard, but we didn’t realize at first how bad ours was because it was not as concentrated.” She said as the text messages, phone calls, and emails began to pour in, the overwhelming feelings of not being able to offer friends and neighbors the kind of help they needed were immense.
“There was nothing immediate I could do other than trying to find resources for them,” she says with a heavy sigh. “I would ask if they needed a place to stay or if they needed food, but I knew I could not help them with the things they really needed in that moment.”
Dotson said resources began rolling into the community. As the Governor toured impacted areas, FEMA, the Small Business Administration, and the American Red Cross set up information centers in the City of Benton.
“I was getting calls from all over the county from people asking for help, asking where they could go. I remember one day I just stood there and cried. I was so overwhelmed and just didn’t know how I could help everyone, and then it was like a white knight rode in when the Elks opened up a supply distribution site at the old library, which was just across the street from city hall.”
Dotson said the burden of not being able to help anyone quickly began to lift. “I could send them right across the street and they could get everything they needed and then, of course, the next week the hotline was opened and that was another tremendous burden lifted off of my shoulders, because I could steer people toward additional resources.”
Knowing that supplies were helpful initially, Dotson said she was keenly aware that the next immediate need coming would be for financial assistance. Fortunately, Foust and Colburn had worked with supply distribution volunteers the day after the storms hit to create a new arm of their non-profit foundation account designated specifically for Marshall County storm victims.
Within hours, the fund was set up to accept online donations through a Venmo account. It was the first Marshall County storm victim donation account to be up and running with an online donation option and the first to have an online distribution application process for victims. Donations began rolling in immediately and applications were made available online and at various locations around the county.
“Transparency is very important to all of us,” Dotson said. “People have entrusted us with this money that they donated to go to the storm victims in Marshall County and it was our goal to get this application process up and running as quickly as possible so we could get it distributed to those in need.” To date, the fund has taken in approximately $140,000, almost all of which has been distributed to Marshall County families impacted by the storms. “We do our best to verify that the address of the applicant is in the path of the storm and yes, we have had to turn some applications down.”
She added that many of the applicants are families who have lost everything and in many cases were underinsured. She notes they will have a very difficult time trying to rebuild their lives after this devastation but she hopes that in some way the assistance, provided through the generosity of others, helps them to get this process started.
Of helping individuals like Mary Hale and assisting nearly 100 other Marshall County families with financial aid, Dotson, in her humble fashion says, “This is what we are here to do – we try to help as many people as possible, that’s what our community does – we take care of each other. We are just so extremely blessed and thankful for each and every donor who contributed to this account, giving us the ability to extend a helping hand to our friends and neighbors during one of their greatest times of need.”
