MAYFIELD, Ky. (WTVF) — Nearly one year after one of the worst tornado outbreaks to ever hit the United States, parts of the town of Mayfield, Kentucky, still appear much as they did just days after an EF4 tornado flattened the town and took the lives of 24 people who lived there.
While in some parts of the town you can see dozens of newly-constructed homes, in others, there are streets still lined with broken and mangled traffic lights.
Progress is stop and go.
"I honestly feel like by now you would’ve seen they're trying to build, but it doesn’t seem like it," said Janet Guardian, whose family used to own La Azteca Market on Ninth Street.
This week, approaching the one-year mark, Guardian was still shoveling up debris from what was left of the flattened structure where the tornado came through. While mechanical arms from backhoes were still hard at work cleaning up the blocks around her, she and her family have done much of their cleanup with their own arms.
Next door, The Barn, so far the only restaurant to rebuild and reopen in the hardest hit area of downtown Mayfield, was packed with customers.
"It’s home cooking, country food, and people love it," said owner Wayne Flint.
But Flint says for as busy as they can be at the diner, it can be awfully lonely in what still remains of downtown.
"Some days you’re coming up here and you’re just thinking, 'Wow, there’s nothing here but us.'" Flint said.
Two more restaurants downtown are set to join The Barn soon.
"I’m glad," Flint said. "I don’t care if it’s a restaurant, a cafe, or a hardware store. We need businesses down here."
Flint worries that other business owners delaying decisions on where to rebuild — or whether to rebuild — is keeping the downtown from coming back.
But there are more visible signs of progress just down the street.
After their home was destroyed, Bill Patterson and his wife, Barbara, were the first to receive a home from the nonprofit Homes and Hope for Kentucky.
"There are so many good people left in this world. I didn't think there were any left," said Patterson.
Patterson says much of this progress has been thanks to religious groups in town ever since.
Samaritan's Purse is getting ready to build 70 homes nearby.
"There's people out there who really care," said Patterson. "It's made me so humble."
But how can you sum up the feeling here, after a catastrophe that's impacted so many here so differently?
"I promise you, there is hope," Patterson said.
"I have no idea, where's the hope at?" said Guardian.
No matter how you measure it in Mayfield, there's no single yardstick for progress.
