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By Mark Steil
August 2, 2000
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RealAudio 3.0 |
The F-4 tornado that recently tore through Granite Falls forever complicated the lives of everyone who lived through it, including a group of people who were in the struggle of their lives even before the storm arrived. The residents of "Project Turnabout" are fighting to beat gambling or chemical addictions, but the tornado threatened their new found stability.
WALKING THROUGH PROJECT TURNABOUT'S wrecked office building, administrator Phil Kelly points out his desk. Although the roof above it is gone, a radio still sits in the spot it occupied when the tornado arrived, while the wind gently turns the pages of a thick telephone book.
"My car ended up right there, right there," Kelly recalls.
Kelly's car ended up a few feet from where his office window once was. Looking at the remains of the building where he and 17 others rode out the storm, Kelly shakes his head in disbelief. Two of the four buildings on the Project Turnabout campus in Granite Falls were destroyed. Kelly hopes the remaining structures can be salvaged. He says what's most disheartening is that three of the buildings are only a year old. When they opened last summer, it was dream come true for the program. Kelly says some of the patients also lost a great deal.
"One of the compulsive gamblers had severe damage to his vehicle. Every possession he had in life was in that car. For you and I, there wasn't much there. To him, it was everything."
For many people in Granite Falls, the tornado will be the psychological shock of their lives. For the Project Turnabout clients, it was piling on. Bev, a client in the gambling addiction program, says even before the storm struck, she and others were going through an intense emotional battle to shake off their addiction.
"By the time you get to this program for gamblers you have hit a real chaotic lifestyle. You're wondering about where to get money to go gambling, your thought processes are all involved in gambling. And your life is out of control, really."
Bev escaped that lifestyle by signing up for the intensive group counseling of Project Turnabout. But her new found sense of stability seemed to disappear after the storm.
"So when that tornado hit, and that was after we'd been here for a while and you're getting kind of settled down and understanding that things are going to get better, it was almost like a backwards step. Because it just threw everything back into chaos again."
Bev and the other members of the gambling addiction program huddled in a hallway when the storm struck. After the tornado one of the first things they did was hold hands in the parking lot and pray. Bev says her first inclination was to leave the program and go home. She says now that would have been a bad idea. Bev believes she would have used the emotional turmoil of the tornado as an excuse to start gambling again.
Kelly says that danger is real, in fact he says a couple of chemically dependent clients who went home after the storm quickly began using again.
"It has a tremendous impact on people and it will have it on our patients. It comes in waves; they're grateful they survived it, then they get depressed, because of the loss," Kelly said.
Kelly says the program will continue. In fact, the same night the tornado hit, the gambling addiction program relocated to a Granite Falls motel where the clients continue to live. Kelly says some of the drug and alcohol clients went home, but most are expected back when the program reopens at a leased building in Willmar, some 35 miles away. Granite Falls city manager Bill Lavin says Project Turnabout's resolve is a good example for the community.
"It sends a message to the general public, that even though they had substantial damage they're going to stay here and they're going to be part of the future. So we're real excited about that."
Kelly hopes the Granite Falls campus can be rebuilt by the end of next year. Although it's a big one, he believes the tornado is just another obstacle to overcome, another page to be turned.
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