WAYNE – Five years ago on a Friday a community in northeast Nebraska was hit with a powerful EF-4 tornado, but the business community has since grown.
From the Wayne Municipal Airport, a normal Friday event was pushed up a day to host Thursday morning Chamber Coffee.
City Administrator of Wayne at the time in 2013 was Lowell Johnson. Johnson said after the Nebraska State Patrol completed their inferred examination of the area and didn’t find any bodies they knew it was just property damage and everyone went home around 9 p.m. Friday.
“What we didn’t expect was we had about 25-30 surrounding towns show up with their rescue units and their people,” said Johnson. “And we had farmers come in from everywhere with their equipment.”
But with the insurance companies not allowing anyone on the industrial properties, they were sent home, but came right back the next day.
Before the tornado, former Mayor Ken Chamberlain, who is a military guy, had the City of Wayne host two tabletop tornado practices which feature mainly residential damage. Only one mobile home in Wayne had some damage with more damages to homes in the county.
Current City Administrator of Wayne and the previous Executive Director for Wayne Area Economic Development, Wes Blecke talked about a statistic he heard that only 20% of businesses rebuild, but not sure how it would affect employees.
“We lost a large contingent of employees there,” said Blecke. “So, that may be closer only 20% come back, but the physical structures came back all but two; the Plant Marketer and Pacific Coast Feather.”
On the Economic Development side, they wanted to be supportive to the businesses that were rebuilding.
Both the Salvation Army and Red Cross helped out where Team Rubicon organized all the volunteers.
Blecke mentioned what he has seen in a short amount of time.
“I think recovery has been very well done,” Blecke mentioned. “I mean and that’d not from even five years. After a year people were back in Industrial Park doing their thing.”
Join the Wayne Volunteer Fire Department on Friday, October 12 for Chamber Coffee at 10 a.m. from the Wayne Fire Hall.
