The first thing visitors approaching Morgan Township’s Werner Farm Tuesday morning saw was the mangled grain bin on the horizon, followed by a large heap of corrugated metal, and then the teenage girls clad in black leggings and shorts carrying long, twisted scraps of metal through the young corn.
With their red, white, and black Washington Township High School shirts and their hair in braids and ponytails, they could easily have been headed to a workout.
Instead, the entire volleyball team, minus a couple handfuls away at a camp, had been at Al Werner’s farm since 6:15 a.m. for two hours of debris cleanup after Thursday’s E3 tornado wiped out the farmhouse and other structures while Werner and his wife sheltered in the basement. A nearby neighbor had to help them out after it passed.
Josh Martin rents the 170 acres from the Werners and grows corn there. He was on site, staffing a burn pile while his parents and volleyball coaches worked and directed the girls.
“Want to get this picked up and hoping he (Werner) can get a semi here today; otherwise we’ll be picking this metal up again if there’s another tornado,” Martin said of the forecast for Wednesday, which predicted strong to severe thunderstorms in the evening with the possibility of more tornadoes.
“See if you can get your end in first,” said Josh’s dad and East Porter County School Board member Bob Martin to one of the girls as the two prepared to heave a large tree branch onto a big pile in the bed of a dump truck.
“Walk the lawn again and see if you can get the shingles and I’ll pull out,” he said.
Josh Martin said they’ve had help since the day after the tornado. They took the dump truck into the field and had people follow along and throw debris in.
“We’ve been trying to pitch anything that might have nails,” he said. “I guess when the fire department came, they had a bunch of flat tires.”
He said the devastation is much worse than any of the tornado damage he witnessed growing up in Washington Township. “Nothing taking out entire houses,” he said. “We’ve had big trees fall down, but nothing like this.”
Head volleyball coach Alisha Brown said her team of 32 girls does a service day every year. They’ve already donated the proceeds of their golf outing, but the team also does a hands-on service day.
“My plan is for them, when this kind of thing happens, is to find where the need is… and I feed them donuts,” she said.
Like most of the adults dealing with the aftermath of the tornado, the team had never seen such destruction before.
Freshman Alexa Taylor was pitching in on a service day for the first time. “I like that we’re giving back to the community,” she said, “but I think it’s really sad because this is a family home and someone who’s given back to the community.”
Sophomore Kylee Campbell said it was heartbreaking to see the century-plus farm destroyed. “There’s just no words to capture what it is,” chimed in junior Addison Peres.
“It’s unreal,” added junior Rachel Frederick.
“I really appreciate you guys coming out,” Brown told them as the team huddled before eating their donuts and taking off. “We really got a lot done.”
Shelley Jones is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
