Kalvin Bowers looked over what remained of his two-story house of Grayton Road South in Ohatchee this morning.
The second floor lay askew atop the first, items strewn across the lot his family had lived on since they relocated from Los Angeles in 1987.
He has no insurance.
“I was at work in Oxford when the storm hit and I started home,” he said. “The news got worse the closer I got.”
Bowers was one of several family members touched by tragedy today, as three people died yesterday in this enclave of single and double-wide trailer and homes from Wednesday’s tornado.
Here is full coverage of the storms
Joe Wayne Harris, 74, Barbara Harris, 69, Ebonique Harris, 38, were killed in their mobile home. A fourth family member is currently being treated at Children’s of Alabama in Birmingham.
Myeshia Turner, 41, said the family were loving people who always hosted parties. The couple had been married 52 years.
“We had a lot of good times out here,” Turner said, holding a few mementos fished out of the wreckage.
Barbara Harris was known for working at Samco in Ragland, she said.
Turner said their family, who lived a few steps away in another trailer, had nothing left.
“Our trailer is over there in a ditch,” she said.
Sheldon Abbott was another family member who lost his home. He said Joe Wayne Harris was “old school,” a man who loved to hunt, fish and was “everything country.”
Barbara Harris was a good loving woman who was “always there for anybody who needed something.”
Ebonique Harris was “like a sister.”
“You could turn to her anytime you needed anything,” he said.
When the storm hit, Abbott was in a shelter. He returned to find his family’s enclave, land they had lived on since the late 80s, scarred and demolished.
“This was the compound,” he said. “This was our park.”
Ebonique Harris worked as a social worker with the Alabama Department of Human Resources. DHR Commissioner Nancy Buckner said in a statement coworkers are “deeply saddened.”
“For the past six years, Ms. Harris dedicated herself to the protection of vulnerable children and adults in Calhoun County as an employee of the Department of Human Resources. She was an exceptional employee whose passing is a great loss to the department. Our thoughts and prayers are with Ms. Harris’ family and loved ones during this time of heartache,” Buckner said.
Two other people, James William Geno, 72, and Emily Myra Wilborn, 72, were also killed by storms that hit Calhoun County.
Geno lived in a small converted shed off Mud Street that he was converting into a house, said one of his neighbors, Gracen Gibbs, who had lived in a trailer on the property for the past five years. His wife had recently died.
“He hadn’t been there that long,” Gibbs said. Gracen, her husband Chase, 23, and their three children spent the morning sifting through broken toys, photographs, clothing and what was left of their belongings, tossed into pasture land by the storm.
Gracen took her children and sheltered with her mother Mary Darden in Odenville. Chase had only left the trailer 20 minutes before the storm hit to go to work. The family has already been through a great deal. Gracen’s father died of COVID-19 last September after only being sick for a week.
“He was only 60,” Mary said. “He had no underlying issues at all. It’s been hard.”
Ohatchee is a small community not far from the Etowah County line in Northeast Alabama. Chase knew the Harris family through Ebonique.
“They’re just good folks, man,” he said. “That was a real family.”