Alabama Tornado Victims Adjust to Small Mobile Homes

The Orricks’ 84-foot mobile home had a bath tub with water jets that helped ease Terry Orrick’s persistent back pain.

Today, Terry and his wife, Dorothy, settle for a bathroom with a small shower.

They’ve traded life in a five-bedroom home for a smaller mobile home with three bedrooms, each about 10 by 10 feet.

The Orricks’ well-furnished home is gone. In its place is one that contains the bare essentials.

The Phil Campbell family is adjusting to life in a Federal Emergency Management Agency mobile home. They are among some 18 families in Franklin County and 21 in Marion County who are in a FEMA facility after a powerful tornado left them homeless April 27.

It’s a major change, but Terry Orrick said it’s still the place where his family _ including teenage grandchildren Leatha, Dwayne and Christopher _ live.

“It’s home,” Terry Orrick said.

“Right now it is,” Dorothy Orrick added. “It’s got to be home. There’s no place else we’ve got to go.”

Their son, James Orrick, spends a great deal of time there, visiting his parents and making sure they have everything they need. He corrects people when they refer to the dwelling as a trailer.

“It’s a home,” he said.

The Orricks are not the type of people to complain, but it’s difficult to compare what they have today to the home they once enjoyed.

Even a glance toward the back yard brings a different scene from the once-plush greenery that often featured wildlife that would stop by for a visit. The Orricks have photos of that old scene. It’s difficult to imagine that the FEMA home is on that same property.

“We just about had a little zoo back there,” Terry Orrick said. “We could sit out there and watch the foxes play. They’d almost come up to you, they were so used to people. Deer, squirrels, all kinds of animals.

“The kids had a go-cart they loved. We had a great, big, back porch, swimming pool next door and a trampoline. We had, I believe, the biggest oak tree in the county. It threw off the biggest shade. The kids had a swing hanging from it.”

That’s all gone.

The front of the Orricks’ FEMA facility has two thin trees that were stripped by the April 27 storms. Some leaves sprout from new limbs. A wooden ramp leads to the front door. The lack of a screen door has Terry Orrick often holding a flyswatter.

“Every time we open it up, we get flies,” he said. “I hate flies.”

The door opens to a living room-kitchen combination. Typical FEMA homes are 14 by 60 feet. A couch, chair, refrigerator, stove, sink, table with six chairs, coffee table and a few counters are in the small space.

The bedrooms contain a bed, small dresser and night stand.

Plastic crates filled with dishes, towels and sheets line a corner of the living room. Items are stacked in the bedrooms. Long dresses hang on the granddaughter’s bedroom door. The family makes room wherever necessary.

When they gather in the main room, they pull out chairs and chat or watch television.

“It gets crowded, especially if the kids have friends over,” Dorothy Orrick said.

In Hackleburg, Bobby and Sherrel Barnwell live in a FEMA home with their infant grandson, Mitchell Cain BrisBois.

“I hate to complain,” Bobby Barnwell said. “It does its job and the air-conditioning really works well. It gets frustrating, though. It’s not our old home.”

The Orricks said their furnishings are adequate, although Terry Orrick’s bad back causes sleeping problems.

“At the same time, I am blessed to have it,” he said. “The FEMA people have been good to us.”

The FEMA home was broken into when the Orricks were out of town visiting relatives. Several items were taken, including a television the family recently bought.

Then, one day, Seth Hood, pastor of Colbert Heights Baptist Church, gave the family a surprise: a television. He gave it to their daughter, Jennifer Rupley, to give to her parents.

“You just wouldn’t believe how good people have been through all this,” Dorothy Orrick said.

The Orricks recall they literally outran the tornado, speeding away in their truck and not stopping until getting to Bear Creek. Along the way, they kept trying to text Rupley, fearing for her safety.

Finally, she texted back.

“Oh, Daddy,” was all it read.

“Oh, Daddy what?” Terry Orrick replied.

Her response: “Oh, Daddy, so many people are dead.”

Today, Rupley lives in a FEMA trailer with her two children while volunteers build a new home next to it. Earlier this month, she stood in the temporary home and said she was just glad to have it.

“What gets me through daily is I try to focus on what we have, not what we’ve lost,” Rupley said.

In a bit of irony, Terry and Dorothy Orrick bought a surplus FEMA trailer shortly before the storm. They had placed it at the end of their home and planned to move it to a campsite so they could take their grandsons camping. After that, they were going to give it to their granddaughter, who is 18, to live in when she goes away to college.

They found an axle and hot-water heater from that trailer after the tornado. They also found a mattress in a tree. That’s all they have seen of it.

The Orricks moved into their FEMA home during the last week of May. They can stay in it for 18 months.

FEMA spokesman Christopher Foshee said families that receive temporary housing are given a case manager, who visits about every 30 days.

The manager provides information on various resources and works with the family on creating an action plan to try to obtain some sort of permanent housing, Foshee said. He said an extension can be granted after 18 months, but the decision is made on a case-by-case basis.

Without insurance and with their business, Dorothy’s Produce, blown away in the storm, they are trying to decide their next step.

The Orricks sat next to each other in wooden chairs in the kitchen while chatting. Terry Orrick has breathing problems and frequently uses oxygen. He can stretch a line from an oxygen tank in his bedroom to the chair.

They try to keep a perspective on things, remembering the hundreds of deaths that occurred April 27, including 26 in their county.

“I don’t know how I’m going to build back,” he said. “But it’s material things. You can’t take them to Heaven with you, anyway.

“There are people who lost more than we did and we lost a lot. There are people who lost their life. We lost 26 of our neighbors and friends.”