'Everybody needs a hand': Volunteers help tornado victims with clean-up efforts

Just about everywhere you look in the Oak Brook Estates mobile home park in Portage, someone needs help.

“The garage almost was tipped over from the house next door, and that tree, over there, kept it from coming into our house," Linda Poveda told FOX 17, showing her all the damage in and around her home.

Tuesday's tornado wiped out her entire street corner, leaving Poveda and her husband with an uncertain future ahead.

"At our age, it’s hard to start all over again, you know," Poveda said. "(Our) kids say, ‘Well you can come and live with us.’ ‘No, you can come and live with us.’ But it’s something to not have your own home.”

Their home might be gone, but their sense of community is still very much in tact.

“You see on the TV, people going and helping and all that," Poveda said. "I didn’t think that would ever happen here. But there are — there’s tons of people."

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The City of Portage helped organize a volunteer effort Friday, with at least four groups of people traveling to some of the hardest-hit spots in town to move debris to the curb and help in any way the could.

"Just to help people out, you know," said Jason Raudenbush. "Everybody needs a hand.”

Raudenbush was a part of the group helping in Oak Brook Estates, along with several of his Home Depot coworkers.

Others, like Tami Ziegler, who lived nearby, decided to hop in the car with her husband and drive to a place they knew suffered major damage.

“It’s overwhelming," she told FOX 17. "We walked up to this and we were like, ‘Okay, where do we start?’ You just start with the first thing in front of you, I guess.”

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You can call it a labor of love, or maybe, a love for labor.

"Squats!" That’s the one positive," Ziegler joked. "I’m getting my exercise.”

Either way, Ziegler said that love needs to be shared now more than ever.

"There are people out there that love you, you know. People care," she said. "Sometimes, you feel like there isn’t any, but they just come out of the woodwork when you need ‘em.”

A spokesperson for the City of Portage said they are trying to set up other volunteer efforts moving forward. To see if and when those get announced, you can follow their Facebook or keep tabs on their Tornado Recovery page.

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