With a tornado speeding straight for their home in Ash Flat, Arkansas, lineman Clint Ray and his wife gathered their two children and fled to safety just 30 minutes before the twister tore their house to pieces.
An hour later, with his family safe at the house of his sister-in-law and brother-in-law, Ray headed off to his job at North Arkansas Electric Cooperative, stopping at the wreckage of his home just long enough to shut off the water and electricity.
The 33-year-old lineworker says that restoring power for his fellow co-op members brings him peace, despite his own enormous loss. He has been working 18-hour shifts as a “bird dog,” leading a crew of lineworkers from Carroll Electric Cooperative Corp.’s Berryville and Bentonville offices who rushed in to help NAEC.
“It’s a joy to be able to spread light to a dark world,” Ray said. “I’m blessed to be able to do that as my job, and I try to also do that by staying positive. I hope it will help show other people going through disasters that we are stronger than the storm.”
Ray said it’s also his way of giving back to a community that has rallied around him and his family in the wake of the tornado, which ripped through the co-op’s territory on March 14 as part of a devastating storm system that brought twisters, fierce rains and windstorms to parts of the Midwest and South.
Ray, his wife, Hannah, 8-year-old son, Baylor, and 7-year-old daughter, Haisley, are now living in a two-bedroom, one-bath trailer home donated by a couple who stocked the place with provisions and told the family they could stay there for free as long as it takes to rebuild their house.
Other members of the community—including people from the church where Ray serves as assistant pastor—have been helping Hannah gather clothes and other belongings from what was left of their flooded house, which is near the Ash Flat office of the Salem-based co-op. Volunteers have even been doing the family’s laundry, Ray said.
The co-op has also stepped up. Employees have been donating to the Ray family and NAEC has created a GoFundMe website to raise money from a wider audience to help the Rays rebuild their home and replace their possessions. Ray said he’ll take only what the family needs and pass on any excess donations to other people in the community who need help.
“It’s unreal how kind and generous people have been,” he said. “We have really felt so loved and cared for. That’s why I want to keep working to help others. I want to go make a difference in somebody else’s life when so many people are making a difference in mine.”
That doesn’t mean there haven’t been moments of heartbreak. At one point, Ray said, he and Hannah hugged each other and wept while looking at the debris from the home they built with their own hands and the labor of family and friends.
“I stopped by for a few minutes to see the house for the first time in the daylight,” he said. “My wife was there with a bunch of other people, working to save what possessions they could. My wife has been so much stronger than me, but when she saw me, she lost it. We kind of had a moment just crying together.”
But they both know how blessed they are, Ray said.
“It could have been so much worse,” he said. “Everything at our house with a heartbeat survived, including our three dogs and my daughter’s two kitties. That’s all that really matters. God has been good to us.”
Ray has no doubt that any lineworkers who found themselves in the same situation would stay on the job, just as he has.
“I’m nobody special,” he said. “I’m not doing anything they wouldn’t do.”
Ray said his spirits are raised every day by co-op members who thank him and the rest of the crew for restoring their power.
“Yesterday, as we were finishing up in the dark, the lights kicked on in the area we had spent the day working,” he said. “We were driving down the road, seeing the lights on in all the houses because of what we did together. That’s the most satisfying feeling there is.”
Erin Kelly is a staff writer for NRECA.