Video:Tupelo Neighborhood Replaces Trees Uprooted By Tornado

[syndicaster id=’6024257′]

TUPELO, Miss. (WCBI) – A Tupelo neighborhood devastated by the tornado a year a half ago took another step toward recovery Saturday.  WCBI’s Chad Groening reports.

There were plenty of volunteers on hand in the Sharon Hills subdivision. The area is still recovering from the April 28 2014 tornado that cut a swath of destruction through the middle of Tupelo.
Kathryn Rhea is President of the Sharon Hills Neighborhood Association.
“After the tornado a year and a half ago destroyed our canopy of trees and took out a lot of our landscaping we are working today to plant 185 trees and bushes along with beautifying our circle to help recover our canopy and help recover from the tornado,” She says.

Sherrie Cochran runs the Keep Tupelo Beautiful campaign.

“Sharon Hills neighborhood Association was granted money from United Way right after the storm that was relief for reforestation, ” she says. “I also wrote a grant request to Keep America Beautiful. They passed it down to Keep Tupelo Beautiful. So they’ve used both of those funds as well as the grant from the city of Tupelo to beautify this neighborhood at total of about 15-thousand dollars,” Cochran notes.
The Sharon Hills neighborhood is located right off of north Gloster which was ground zero when the tornado struck that day. But thanks to a grant and a plan residents here are now replanting to replace those that were uprooted that day.
And Charlie and Dawn Bean didn’t even live in the neighborhood at the time. They moved here in January and already have done a lot of work on the house which was extensively damaged. They also need to plant trees in the back yard.
“Specifically to protect us from the commercial properties which surround us pretty closely. Our particularly property here is the most exposed.” says Dawn Bean.
“We knew when we brought the property back in January that we would have to do something to work around the perimeter of the neighborhood, ” her husband explains.  “We’re right in corner behind some of the motels that surround it. And we knew we were going to have to come up with a solution at some point,”
he says.

The Beans are glad that the neighborhood association has come through.