UPPER DUBLIN TOWNSHIP, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — Months after tornadoes tore through the region, some Upper Dublin Township residents are still recovering from severe damage, ahead of Thanksgiving.
Barbara Mass, with Upper Dublin Cleanups, said it could take a year for life to get back to normal for some of her neighbors. "We have plenty of people still in this community who are displaced," she said.
Mass helps coordinate assistance through the UD Helping Hands Facebook page and the UD Cleanups page.
"I'm just a small piece of the puzzle. There's just so much going on," she demurred. "There's so much work to be done and there just isn't enough people to do the work."
Fort Washington resident Lisa McAllister is one of those people whose house was devastated by the September storm. "Our home has been deemed uninhabitable," she said. "Two months after the fact, there's not a wall or a floor in my house anymore and I still have tarp on my roof."
McAllister said she didn't plan for three trees to fall on her house on September 1. What's more, she's still dealing with her insurance company about what it will take to recover from it.
"For about five weeks after the tornado, we lived in a hotel," she recalled, also lamenting how difficult the aftermath has been for her teenage daughters.
"Their freshman year was interrupted by COVID and their sophomore year was almost 100% virtual," she said, "and now their junior year, when we had homes that things would return to some normalcy, on the very first day of school, a tornado hits our home, hits their high school!"
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Dorie Litten of Dresher is a volunteer Upper Dublin Thanksgiving coordinator. She explained they organize meals for people in need — but this year, there's a lot of need in their own community, which is not easy for some people to accept.
"Please don't think others need it more. We have enough for everybody," she said. "Our hope is that we have provided them something so that we take a little bit of the burden off their plates, even if just for one day."
McAllister said she's had to learn to accept help, in the form of people bringing meals and sending gift cards. She's also accepted it will likely take more time to get back into her house.
Her misfortune has driven her to reconnect with old friends, she shared — and she's thankful to be able to host Thanksgiving this year in the townhouse where her family now temporarily lives.
"As much as we may have lost that night, I feel like we've exponentially gained so much since that night," she said. "I think this year we probably have more to be grateful for than we ever have before."
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