FeedsWayne resident helps tornado victims
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Keith Butkovich said he was awestruck by the devastation he found in the wake of the tornados that hit northern Ohio last week.Keith Butkovich said he gained new respect for the power of nature last week.
Butkovich, a Wayne resident, traveled about an hour south last Wednesday to help tornado victims in Ohio.
“You can see the pictures, but until you’re there, you don’t realize how bad it is,” he said. “These are peoples’ lives.”
Butkovich said he felt a desire to help when he saw television coverage of the tornados that ripped through northern Ohio and parts of Michigan last week. He solicited donations from friends to give to the Red Cross and decided to deliver them himself. He was familiar with the area through his affection for baseball-he travels frequently to Toledo to watch the Mud Hens-and explored the area surrounding the city. He chose Millbury, a small town southeast of Toledo to go to help.
The main road into town was closed, he said, and he had to follow detours to get close.
“The closer you got to the town, you could see barricades and rubble,” he said.
A local church was the center of activity for volunteers and municipal workers alike-the tornado had destroyed the police department, too.
He said he followed one group of volunteers into a particularly
storm ravaged area and couldn’t believed what he saw. An entire street had been decimated; some homes were reduced to exposed foundations. Others were gone entirely.
“My mouth just dropped,” he said.
All of the other volunteers were from within five or 10 miles of the town, but they welcomed him and quickly put him to work. Butkovich said they sifted through rubble, organizing it into piles based on their composition-at one point 10 volunteers got together to move an entire garage wall into the street-so municipal crews could either remove it or oversee controlled burns.
So many people showed up, said Butkovich, that they had cleaned up what they could within about four hours.
“It was a good group,” he said. “It was hard work, but it was fun, too. We all just went to work; it was a big group willing to help out.”
Throughout the day, he realized how much many people in the small town had lost when the storms swept through. Nearby, a high school valedictorian lost her father in the storm.
“Value what you have,” said Butkovich. “You just don’t know what’s going to happen; it might be you. All of the sudden, everything you have might be gone.”
