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Volunteers gather for community cleanup effort in Uniontown, plan to keep going

By Mike Tony mtony@heraldstandard.Com 3 min read
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Mike Tony | Herald-Standard

Chad Marino of Farmington slices through branches in a backyard between Millview and Lemon streets during a community cleanup session there Saturday focused on ridding the area of debris left behind by a tornado on Feb. 15.

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Mike Tony | Herald-Standard

Cynthia Toth and Juanita Edwards, both of North Union Township, pitched in during a community cleanup session between Lemon and Millview streets in Uniontown Saturday in response to the tornado that hit the area on Feb. 15.

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Mike Tony | Herald-Standard

Volunteers gathered for a cleanup session between Lemon and Millview streets in Uniontown Saturday morning, burning wood and tidying up debris tossed in yards and streets by a tornado on Feb. 15.

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Mike Tony | Herald-Standard

Aiden Hall, 7, of Millview Street, adds to the burn pile during volunteer cleanup Saturday of debris left behind by last month’s tornado between Lemon and Millview streets in Uniontown.

UNIONTOWN — Chad Marino of Farmington helped make Brian Cross’s backyard off the alley between Millview and Lemon streets a safer place Saturday, using a Poulan Pro chainsaw and sheer force of will to rid Cross’s pine tree of a 24-foot aluminum sheet hanging perilously within, ever since a tornado stormed through the alley last month.

While Cross’s Millview Street neighbor surveyed her tornado-twisted fence, James Hall of Masontown saw there was nothing separating them.

“Everybody’s your neighbor,” Hall said.

Hall, Marino and several dozen other volunteers focused on the alley and surrounding lots for a tornado community cleanup day Saturday morning engineered by Tim Mahoney, a former state representative, and other charity-minded community members from the Uniontown area and beyond.

“This was needed,” said Buzz Hall, pastor of Solid Rock Ministry, a church at 34 Millview St. which continues to collect food, cleaning supplies and other non-clothes items for tornado-impacted neighborhood residents. “My goodness, this was needed.”

Volunteers burned wood and other debris from waylaid trees, clearing plywood, siding, roof scraps away from residents’ yards and the alley between Lemon and Millview.

“Nobody can do it all on their own,” Marino said.

Juanita Edwards, a 16-year-old sophomore at Laurel Highlands High School, came out to help. Edwards has been living at Holiday Inn Express in South Union Township ever since the tornado tore through Laurel Estates, where she and her family had lived near the high school.

Edwards said her family is waiting to find out from Pennrose whether their home can be salvaged.

Pennrose is a Philadelphia-based housing property managing company that manages Laurel Estates and has been paying for displaced residents to stay at Holiday Inn Express since the tornado. Laurel Estates, an income-based property complex near Laurel Highlands High School, had 26 out of a total 56 units damaged by the tornado, according to Pennrose Vice President of Marketing & Communications Lee Reedy, who added last week that residents of damaged Laurel Estates properties that they would not be allowed back into their homes until they are deemed safe according to a structural engineer’s damage assessments completed Wednesday.

Edwards helped look after Hall’s 7-year-old grandson Aiden amid Saturday’s cleanup, during which he grabbed a shovel and added to the burn pile too.

Millview Street is the site of 29 homes posted as uninhabitable. Cross said that most of those houses remain lived in, including his. Cross pointed out that the exterior damage to his home, including two broken windows and a lifted 3- by 3-foot chunk of the roof, pales in comparison to the majority of houses on his block, which is littered with blue, tarp-patched rooftops.

“They’re toughing it out,” Cross said.

“Everybody needs help,” said Cynthia Toth, a volunteer and North Union Township resident who noted that her township remains devastated by the tornado as well.

Mahoney said that he intends to keep having community tornado cleanup days every weekend going forward, adding that volunteers for next weekend’s effort can convene in front of Gus’s Pub at 58 E. Fayette St., Saturday, at 9:30 a.m., weather permitting.

Saturday was an opportunity for the community to embrace Jesus’s commandment cited by Bryan Kelley, pastor of Bethel Baptist Church on North Gallatin Avenue Extension, while hauling branches to the burn pile: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

A few minutes earlier, right before sawing a limb off of Cross’s tree, Marino had cited the same commandment.

“Fayette County needs a reason to believe again,” he said.

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