The second that David Richey closed the closet door behind him to hide with his family and pets was the last moment before his life changed course.
A high EF-4 tornado took over the Richeys' west Pulaski County home for the next 30 seconds that April 27 evening, tearing up the roof, shattering windows and ripping out the nails that held boards together.
His family survived, but the house, the cars and the woods around them on Deer Drive became something they'd never seen before.
"I get choked up talking about it," he said.
Three people on his street died that night, along with 13 others in Faulkner and White counties.
Since then, the Richeys have worked with neighbors and a contractor fixing up the area. For the past two weeks, they hurried to get as much of the debris as they could into county-provided bins before Labor Day.
Four months and nearly $700,000 later, Pulaski County has pulled out of the cleanup process in its western corridor.
All summer long, the county had bins set up in the tornado-damaged area for residents to place debris into. The county took away nearly 700 loads of debris at an average of 5 tons per load to the landfill or mulching center for processing.
All that ended this week, when the county ran out of money to continue its services.
Typical yard waste, such as grass clippings, will still be hauled away on the county Sanitation Department's regular route. But larger debris will have to be hauled to a roadside right-of-way for the county to collect it, department Director Kathy Botsford said.
"Most people have their yards clean," said Shane Ramsey, assistant director of the county Road and Bridge Department.
The department received $500,000 from the governor's office to assist with the cleanup because Pulaski County was left out of federal public assistance aid. The Road and Bridge Department has also paid $182,000 for extra landfill fees, some equipment and labor.
For some tornado victims, the cleanup isn't over, although much of the rubble has been taken away.
Richey, 46, has at least a half acre of trees, cut up into logs and stripped, piled up on his property that he paid a contractor to gather. It's too big to burn in the way other people have done with their debris, he said.
Richey needs to haul it away. And now that will be a longer trip than it was to the county-supplied bin, which was a half mile away.
Richey said he has no means of even picking up the debris, let alone moving it.
"The kind of equipment I'll need is going to be very, very expensive," he said.
Homeowner's insurance covered the cost of repairing the $40,000 in damage to his roof and windows, and fixing the boards where the nails had been sucked out by the fierce tornado winds.
Like most central Arkansas tornado victims, Richey didn't receive assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency after applying months ago. He didn't qualify for a U.S. Small Business Administration loan, either, which he applied for because he works out of his home as an insurance salesman.
In Pulaski County, 16 applications were approved for $117,235.14 in FEMA aid out of 93 referred applicants. The agency has not made a decision on 50 applications.
In Faulkner, Randolph and White counties, $2.9 million in aid has been approved for 324 of 1,051 referred applications. Most of that was approved for residents in hard-hit Faulkner County, which received $2.7 million in aid.
Eligibility requires disaster survivors to have "necessary expenses or serious needs as a result of the disaster that are not covered by insurance or any other source," according to a FEMA fact sheet. The damaged home must also be inaccessible or not livable because of the disaster.
Richey and his family have been able to live in the home since the tornado, although much of the roof was destroyed.
FEMA aid does not need to be paid back. The U.S. Small Business Administration gives loans to business and property owners affected by disaster.
As of Friday, 56.1 percent of Small Business Administration loan applicants had been approved in connection with the storm for a total of $10.9 million for 123 Arkansas residents and businesses. Just more than $800,000 of that was approved for 11 Pulaski County home loans.
In the gated community of Somerset Estates, Jerry and Carol Thompson have to rebuild their home.
Pulaski County workers took away their debris in May, and the land has been cleaned up.
But the Thompsons won't live in Somerset Estates again until next year, when they expect construction to be finished on a slightly smaller version of their 3,000-square-foot home.
So far, everything has been paid for by insurance, aside from a $10,000-plus project cleaning up the damaged woods on the Thompsons' acreage. But Jerry Thompson, 66, said he didn't have to take out a loan to finance it.
"I applied for FEMA aid, but they told me I wasn't eligible," Thompson said.
The Thompsons have been living in their cabin on Lake Nimrod, waiting for a new permanent home.
Meanwhile, the Richeys stayed in their damaged Deer Drive home all summer long. David Richey stayed busy painting, re-staining and reconstructing porches and steps. It took him 33 days to cut a 25-yard path through the rubble.
For extra income, he got another job working full-time as a commercial salesman with Terminix. Richey only does insurance on the side now, as fixing up his family's home has become a primary focus.
"It's tedious work," he said. "It's time-consuming.
"I think it's even better than it was before," he added.
As for the pile of stripped logs on his property, Richey will wait and see what he can do with it but doesn't think he can afford a contractor to get rid of all of it.
"As it stands now, there's just no way," he said.
Metro on 09/06/2014