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Terry
Jones:
Terry has lived in the area for 21 years. He
bought the land his trailer is on in 1994
when his son was one year old. He eventually
worked for Evendale Shipyard building navy
ships and aircraft carriers. Nine years ago
he fell off of a flight deck and has a great
deal of back pain as a result. He is limited
in what he can do by himself to rebuild from
the devastation of the tornados and storm
surge. Here is his description of his son’s
and his escape from the storm.
“When we started to leave from the
hurricane, we was going to stay tell it
started to get real bad. We stayed at all of
them before. They never was this bad. It
started to get real bad. When we was backing
out of the drive It looked like the back of
a tornado came through the corner over
there. When we was backing out me and him
got out. We went to Diamondhead to that
motel. We got a room at the top floor. We
wasn’t in our room for about 10 or 15
minutes and the big picture windows in it
started coming in — blowing in — so it was
getting bad. We wanted to get out. The wind
was pushing probably 170 miles an hour. Just
as we got down off the top floor we heard a
big boom and looking up the whole top floor
of the motel got gone. We lost everything we
had in the top of the motel in the room. We
wound up staying for little over a week in a
corner.”
It wasn’t until the middle of January when
he and his son were able to return to find
that his trailer had been looted. Terry had
lost everything. He mentioned gold plates
that had belonged to his mother. And now he
was about to loose his trailer. Due to new
building codes passed after the hurricane if
a trailer was not at the level it had been
before the hurricane by July 1, 2006 (just
days from our arrival) Terry would have to
raise his trailer an additional 4 feet or
risk loosing it. As Terry said “this is my
last chance right here.” Fortunately one
member of our crew had the skill to assist
and we were able to raise the trailer to the
appropriate height. We also cleared a fallen
tree and cleaned around the trailer and his
yard leaving Terry very happy.
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