Published Saturday, January 11, 2003
in aid
finally
arrives
Herald Staff Writer
Two months to the day after a tornado damaged and destroyed homes in Clark and South Pymatuning Township, the two communities got some good news.
State Sen. Robert D. "Bob" Robbins, Salem Township, R-50th District, and state Rep. Michael C. Gruitza, Hermitage, D-7th District, announced Friday that Clark will receive $100,000 and South Pymatuning will get $40,000 to cover costs associated with the Nov. 10 tornado.
The grants were welcome news to Clark Mayor Doug Bradley.
"I'm feeling a lot better. I'm quite relieved," he said. "I was concerned about this last evening ... I was beginning to wonder what will we do if we don't get the money?"
Bradley said the borough is now well on its way to recovery.
"We'd like to get the borough back to where it was, the nice town it is to live in," he said. "Hopefully a year from now we'll have a lot of that complete and will be back on our feet."
The grant money will also be a big help to South Pymatuning as the township rebuilds.
"We're certainly excited we were able to get this money, and we certainly appreciate the efforts of Sen. Robbins and Rep. Gruitza for standing beside us the whole way through and helping us out the way that they did," said Mike Nashtock, chairman of the South Pymatuning supervisors.
Nashtock said he and the other supervisors will sit down and figure out the township's tornado-related costs, which include replacing street signs and repairing equipment, before deciding how to spend the money.
"I'm sure there's going to be some costs we didn't think about," he said.
Bradley said the borough will use its money to cover cleanup expenses and replace budgeted items, such as lost property taxes.
The money will also go toward overtime expenses for the police and firefighters who assisted with traffic control and rescues the night of the storm and crews from other municipalities who assisted in the cleanup.
"Municipalities from all across Mercer County have worked together to assist Clark borough and South Pymatuning Township recover from that frightening day, and I'm pleased the state is stepping forward to help financially with the recovery effort as well," Robbins said in a news release.
"That was a sad day that affected families in so many ways," Gruitza said in the release. "The financial costs to the two communities was great. This aid will help cover the enormous expense for the cleanup that Clark borough and South Pymatuning Township have been burdened with since the disaster."
The two communities did not receive money from just the state on Friday. Bradley said he received a $1,500 donation from Wal-Mart in Hempfield Township for the Tornado Disaster Relief Fund, which was established to help the victims. The fund's total was about $65,000 on Friday, Bradley said.
The tornado killed one man, 81-year-old Charles Templeton of Clark, injured 19 people and destroyed eight homes in Clark and three in South Pymatuning. About 50 homes in the township and 55 in the borough were affected in some way by the storm.