Tornado aftermath: 'Like we didn't exist'

BRANCHVILLE—The corner used to be filled with a century-old brick feed store, a hardwood beauty with ceiling-high shelves. Now, it's a vacant lot.

At the other end of the historic Main Street storefront block, Clifton Ott's cracked brick buildings still stand. He blustered that if they tried to bulldoze, they'd have to do it over top of him. And they didn't. But now the block, like the tiny old town around it, has the look of missing teeth, the feel of something that's not all there.

Sunday marked one year since a 150 mph tornado slammed like a sledgehammer through the heart of Branchville, ripping apart two-thirds of the businesses that pumped economic life into the place.

The bricks that built the town crumbled. Across the street from the storefront row, the 1901 Town Hall building and the lone grocery store were turned into rubble. Down the street, The Churn - the walk-up ice cream stand considered the "heart and soul" of the community — was a pile of bricks.

Today, The Churn is back in business, but the town struggles to get back on its feet. Town offices and traffic court operate out of the maintenance shed. The mayor's office is an old work trailer across the drive. A steel shell grocery building is under construction where the roof collapsed on the old one.

"Some people recovered; some didn't," said Johnny Dukes, The Churn's owner, as he served sandwiches on the new faux-marble counter where a year ago he sat helplessly at a picnic table in the ruins.

Nothing has been easy. After the first rush of support, little help arrived for the 1,200 people of Branchville. All the visits from politicians and the promise of government disaster assistance turned into nothing more than offers of a 4.5-percent-interest loan.

A series of tornadoes swept the state in a storm front on March 15, 2008, with twisters spotted on Folly Beach and Yonge's Island.

Near Goose Creek, 16 mobile homes were destroyed or damaged. With an outpouring of support in the suburban community, residents of the Strawberry Mobile Home Park largely have recovered.

"Everyone I've been able to account for is back in here or relocated and doing well," manager Betty Mizzell said.

Branchville is one of those off-to-the-side, tiny country towns just hanging on, a railroad junction that the interstates simply passed by. It's the sort of place where a rusted old tractor rattles down Main Street in the middle of the day. The dollar signs of the added-up damage weren't big enough to bring big-time federal help. Gov. Mark Sanford never was able to declare a disaster. Orangeburg County building inspectors had no choice but to condemn the damaged structures.

"Council was told we were going to get some state and federal money. I'm sitting here trying to think, can we get any money anywhere?" Mayor Tim Cooner said.

"It was like we didn't exist. People didn't think too highly of that. You have disasters in other places and they get all kinds of disaster assistance," Dukes said.

For Charles Dukes, who owned the corner feed store, a 4.5 percent loan wasn't as good as the mortgage on his home. He hung on for two months, fighting off the condemnation. Once the shock wore off, he laid out the numbers and realized putting the building back together just wasn't worth going into debt up to his eyeballs. He's now teaching.

"It was just monumental amounts of money to rebuild," Dukes said. "I understand they have got to draw the line somewhere, but we needed help. The people who suffered losses, the businesses, we were given all this talk of help and nothing came out of it. I was just hoping we'd get rescued a little bit."

The business had been in the family since 1946. But Dukes already was struggling, gradually turning it into a sporting goods shop. When Sanford stopped by while assessing the damage, Dukes told the governor, "If I lose my business because I'm a bad manager, that's one thing. If I lose it because of a disaster that's a totally different thing."

He told other people then, "we're just a speck of dust on the map and we'll get brushed away."

Clifton Ott got luckier with his historic bric-a-brac hardware store and an accompanying building that was a bookend match for Charles Dukes'. He took on the county and found a structural engineer who said Ott's buildings could be repaired. A lot of bricks and cement patching later, they still stand. The faded wall painting "ghost sign" advertising Piedmont cigarettes "might be the most significant (historic) thing in Branchville right now," said amateur historian Eddie Hightower.

Even the tornado cleanup has caused problems. Orangeburg County brought in equipment and manpower to help the town clear its streets of bricks, building pieces and fallen trees. The debris was piled in an unused campground at the edge of town. The town simply hasn't had the time or resources to do anything more.

In September, S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control inspected and found asbestos. Staffers have been meeting with the county and the town to get it cleaned up.

"We understand the situation. It's a hardship. That's why we're trying to work with them as far as we can and still meet the requirements of the law, rather than take the hard-line approach," said Thom Berry, DHEC media relations director.

At times, Cooner sounds discouraged, at times resigned. Town finances are holding together so far, he said. "We're standing our ground." But it has been hard.

"We're hoping and praying that in this stimulus bill there will be something to build a new town hall."

Charles "Egg" Boltin stops in front of Ott's store after doing business at the cookie-cutter modern bank that's been built between Ott and what once was Charles Duke's store. He points back to the vacant lot, saying that things won't be the same.

"I did business with that guy and his daddy," Boltin said. "A lot of these little towns just dry up. I guess this one is about dried up."

Reach Bo Petersen at 843-937-5744 or bpetersen@postandcourier.com.