Pilot Grove community focuses on cleanup, rebuilding after EF-2 tornado hits town

PILOT GROVE, Mo. (KMIZ)

The Pilot Grove Community is picking up their gloves and chainsaws to help with clean up efforts following a tornado Wednesday morning.

After leaving her basement following the storm, Pilot Grove resident and community building board member Sue Day grabbed her rake and joined her neighbors in the cleanup.

"There is lots of people that jumped in to help us, and I really appreciate that," Day said. "Another young man had some kind of like a skid loader with a handle that he could grab the limbs off my deck, so he did that and he was down helping here at the at the park, they're just doing that as community service."

Day adds that she was surprised about the storm as a tornado hasn't touched down in Pilot Grove in decades.

"I've seen high winds and I think there's been some tornadoes like south of town, but this is the first time I can remember that anything's really hit in our town," Day said.

Jenny Larens Rudkins said she’s spent her entire life near Pilot Grove. For the past decade, she and her husband lived off Route M without issues, despite frequent severe storm warnings. 

“We kind of get complacent because we've had several warnings and then it just like either just  skirts north or skirts south or just you know,  it  almost felt like we were insulated somehow,” Rudkins said. 

Wednesday morning started off normally. Rudkins was about to drive to Columbia for work when she got an alert on her phone. Instead of going back inside to check the radar, she decided to head to a safe room inside her house.

“As soon as I walked through the door, the lights went out. I closed the door. I was in there maybe 15 seconds when I heard it hit,” she said.

Rudkin's home was one of more than 250 without power in the area due to downed trees and power lines, with hundreds more reported around the county. Storm chaser Aven Bange began tracking the storm at 9:30 am and witnessed some of the damage. 

“There were some power lines that were just bent and then some that were completely snapped,” Bange said. 

Inside the safe room, Rudkins listened helplessly as the storm tore through her home. 

It just sounded like crackling paper and then I heard a big pop, and then I heard a part of the roof hit the hit the door that I was behind,” Rudkins said. 

When she emerged from the shelter, she found the metal panels of her roof completely torn off and a large shed at the front of the house caved in. Trees and debris from the home littered the large field that surrounds the property, with some pieces of the home shot hundreds of yards away. 

“This is some of the worst that we have seen,” Melissa Wilding, a community disaster program manager for the Central Northern Missouri chapter of the Red Cross, said. “This particular home is the worst that we have seen.”

After coordinating with the local command center, the Red Cross arrived to conduct a preliminary damage assessment, as Pilot Grove residents began picking up the pieces.

“These communities are very, very strong and they're very well connected with each other. And it is always refreshing to us when we see the collaboration of the work already being done to help this community and those that were most affected by storms like this,” Wilding said. “That always kind of warms my heart personally to see that.”

The Katy Trail impacted

A section of the Katy Trail was also damaged. Katy Trail State Park announced online that the trail from mileposts 201-204 will be closed until further notice due to downed trees across the path.

Katy Trail coordinator with Missouri State Parks Cassie Brandt said that after the storm, crews were notified about the trail's damage by the Missouri State Highway Patrol. A park ranger and trail crews from Knob Knoster and Mid-Missouri were later called in to help with clean up.

"This is the worst damage in this kind of central Missouri section in the three years that I've been with Missouri State Parks, that said, we're experienced in this kind of thing, so we're dispatched pretty quickly," Brandt said.

Crews expect to have the trail clear by Sunday at the earliest and by the second weekend of April at the latest. Trailgoers are also asked to avoid the path for their own safety and to give crews space to work. Trail updates can be found on the Katy Trail Advisory Map.