2007: Tornado rips through Caulfield

By Regina Wynn [Mozingo]

Reprinted from March 7, 2007, Ozark County Times- 

Surrounded by family and friends, Rick Jarvis looked in disbelief at the remains of his store. 

Rubble litters where the garage used to be. Wind whips through the building, easily passing through where the roof and windows once were and only shattered glass remains. 

Behind the store, three large gas tanks, once filled with fuel, lie 50 yards from where they were, bits of insulation, newspaper and twisted steel fill the trees... and Jarvis’s father’s Bronco lies crushed beneath the weight of a large oak tree. 

Jarvis just shakes his head at the destruction. “I’m just glad we weren’t hurt.”

The deadly storms that ripped through Missouri, Alabama and Georgia last week had a devastating effect on the small community of Caulfield, which straddles the Ozark/Howell County line.

According to the National Weather Service, the F-3 tornado was first sighted shortly after 6:30 a.m. at Caulfield. The tornado ripped a path of destruction beginning at the intersection of Highway 160 and 101, before turning toward K Highway and the Fair View School in Howell County. Touching down periodically, the tornado veered away from the school, instead hitting the nearby home of Ozark County native Max Shipley and his wife, Charlotte. 

The community suffered five injuries and one death. Elizabeth Croney, 7, was killed and her parents, Jay and Tamara Croney, and brothers, Anthony, 10, and Austin, 8, were injured when the tornado destroyed their mobile home. 

Several businesses and homes also were destroyed during the Thursday morning storm, including Jarvis Station. 

“We’d rather have lost the building than that poor little girl losing her life. These are just material things. They can be replaced. She can’t,” says Jarvis’ daughter, Kasey Friend of Gainesville. 

For more than 41 years, Jarvis Station has been in business. 

“My grandparents built the station when Dad was 7,” said Friend. “He grew up in that store. I grew up in that store. My great-grandparents helped run it after my grandpa built it. Three generations have run that store. I never thought I’d see it go away.”

Although the station is beyond repair, the Jarvis family knows that they’re fortunate they didn’t lose more than their business.

“Dad was just staying in the house next to the station,” says Friend. “He was in the house, sitting in a chair by the door when he heard the wind blowing. He said it sounded like all the glass in the house was breaking.

“It didn’t sound like a train  like people said it would, but he knew what it was so he just got down and waited it out, but it only lasted 15 seconds, if that.

“My sister Kaiyla’s boyfriend Eddie and his little boy were taking my sister up to meet the bus for school when they saw the tornado coming,” Friend continues, “So they got out of the truck and got down in the ditch. Eddie watched the tornado as it came across the road, ripped off the roof of the station, jumped over the house where Dad was and hit the building next to it.

“It was too close but no one in our family was hurt, and that’s what is most important.

“We would rather lose the store 100 times over than lose a child. It just makes me sick when I think about that little girl’s family. When I came home I got Cooper (her son) and just hugged him and held him. I can’t even imagine losing him.”

Friend says the tornado has affected the way she looks at warnings now.

“It’s not something you really think about until it affects you. Normally, you would just think, ‘Oh, it’s just a storm. Nothing’s really going to happen,’ But you’d be wrong. You just never know.

“I’m still in a daze,” she continues. “But I will never ever not listen to a warning again. I will be in the basement, cause you just don’t know what’s going to happen.

“You see the devastation of other disasters on TV, like Katrina, but you’re sitting in your house, thinking it really couldn’t happen here in Gainesville or Caulfield. 

“But it can. It can happen anywhere.”

The Jarvis family has already begun clean-up work around the station, cleaning the debris, preparing to bulldoze behind the store.

“Dad is going to rebuild the store,” says Friend. “A little bit at a time, but he’s going to do what he can. It will be a slow process building back.”

Many people in the Caulfield area don’t have insurance to help rebuild their homes, businesses and lives. 

“There should be some kind of assistance for helping people rebuild or clean up,” Friend says. “A lot of the people who lost their homes don’t have insurance or the resources to rebuild. They have to live week-to-week, with no kind of savings. It’s the way of life here, but it leaves them with very little when disaster hits.

“This may be a small town, but this is a disaster for this area, and it’s just as important as when something happens in a large area. One life is just as important as five. Everybody’s life is worth something.

“People lost their homes, their businesses,” she continues. “If the government has some way to help in Alabama, there should be some way to help in Missouri, too.”

But, she stresses, the community as a whole is pitching in and helping out where they can. 

“In a small community, something like this affects everybody because everybody knows everybody.

“That’s one good thing about a small community, everybody helps,” Friend says. “Kids and adults - the whole community came together to pick up trash, cut trees and branches, helping in any way they could.

“If you can’t depend on people higher up, at least the community will back you up. By the time I left the store at 10:30 a.m., we couldn’t get another car in the parking lot. People were showing up to help us clean up.

“There were people out there picking up paper, insulation, pictures, just helping how they could.”

Though Jarvis Station is still standing, the damage is irreplaceable. And things will never be the same in the small community of Caulfield. But Friend says she’s learned something from the disaster. 

“Small communities are wonderful. Every person should be thanked. They come together when disaster strikes or someone needs help. Makes me glad to live here.”