Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 9, 1993 TAG: 9308090080
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Mayor Rosalyn Dance said a state engineer who specializes in preservation told her over the weekend that the buildings, located in the nine-block area known as Old Towne, can be saved.
"They can be brought back," she said of the buildings, which survived a 10-month siege by Union troops during the Civil War.
Dance and other local and state officials spent Sunday coordinating government and volunteer efforts to help victims and to clean up the wreckage caused by the twister.
Four people were killed and about 170 were injured by Friday afternoon's tornado. It was the deadliest to strike Virginia since September 1959, when a twister killed 10 people in Ivy, a small town west of Charlottesville.
Though Petersburg, about 20 miles south of Richmond, and neighboring Colonial Heights sustained the most damage, nine other area jurisdictions also had wreckage, said Janet Clements, a spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Emergency Services.
Teams of federal and state disaster officials are scheduled to go into those places today to estimate the amount of uninsured damage, Clements said. Those figures will be used in the request for federal assistance that Gov. Douglas Wilder has said he will make, Clements added.
Business owners and insurance adjusters may be allowed to inspect some damaged buildings in Petersburg today if building inspectors confirm that the structures are safe to enter, Dance said.
State and local police have formed such a tight cordon around damaged businesses that not only have there been no reports of looting or vandalism, but some business people have been frustrated by the level of security, according to Dance. Police have caught a few shopkeepers trying to sneak past them to check on their businesses, she said.
One of the largest businesses damaged was the Wal-Mart discount store in Colonial Heights, where three people were killed when the store collapsed.
Store officials plan on razing the store and rebuilding it, according to Sunday's editions of the Progress-Index, the local newspaper. The paper quoted a Wal-Mart official as saying the company would find jobs for the store's 400 employees during the construction.
While shopkeepers assessed the damage, hundreds of volunteers pitched in to help tornado victims, officials said.
At Southside Regional Medical Center in Petersburg, volunteers came in to answer phones and deliver supplies to a command center, said Camilla Bunch, a nursing supervisor.
Volunteers also helped residents of heavily damaged Pocahontas Island, a black settlement on the Appomattox River where freed slaves were given land during Reconstruction.
They distributed donations of blankets, food and items such as eyeglasses and hearing aids to island residents, many of whom are elderly, Dance said.
Fifteen of the island's 42 houses are uninhabitable because of tornado damage, and residents of those houses are living with friends and neighbors, she said.
by CNB