MAYFIELD, Ky. (LEX 18) — Mayfield is a community starting all over again, and it has a long way to go.
Mayfield Mayor Kathy O'Nan says the town has been getting much-needed advice from Joplin, Missouri.
"They tell us 10 years, so I'm not expecting anything shorter than that," O'Nan said by phone.
People in Joplin would know. Their town was obliterated in May of 2011 when a mile-wide monster twister killed 161 people and destroyed more than four-thousand homes. Today Joplin is still building back – thirteen years later.
While Mayfield is on the mend, city and county leaders are devising long-term plans for basic infrastructure such as housing and transportation. Mayor O'Nan says residents will really see more construction early next year through the spring. The city has spent much of the past years moving mountains of debris.
Longtime resident Sammie Bright misses what can't be built.
"All them trees used to go up to the sky, it seemed like," Bright said.
She survived the December 10, 2021, tornado that also spared her home, damaging only her roof.
A year later, Bright has a bare view of the downtown Mayfield skyline. The twister sliced right through the more than one-hundred-year-old wall of trees across from her home.
When asked how she has been doing the past twelve months, Bright gets emotional.
"I'm making it, when the people came to the house to work on it I couldn't talk, but cry," Bright said. "Sometimes I don't even know where I am."
