Many residents in Effingham County are still in recovery mode after an EF-3 tornado struck the area, leaving farmers to deal with damaged property, equipment and crops.

EFFINGHAM COUNTY, Ill. (WAND) — Many residents in Effingham County are still in recovery mode after an EF-3 tornado struck the area, leaving farmers to deal with damaged property, equipment and crops.

Norbert Soltwedel and his family own land near Shumway. He said he lost five grain bins, equipment and buildings in the storm.

"I come down the road, and I look over, and I see my grain leg is falling over and all the buildings are gone," Soltwedel said. "It's just one of those things. It's unbelievable at the time, but it happened."

Soltwedel said the tornado wiped out roughly 70,000 bushels of storage capacity across five destroyed bins. Now he and his family are weighing whether to replace the bins or arrange with a local co-op to have trucks available to haul grain directly. 

He's also concerned about yield. He had already planted his corn and soybeans when the tornado came through. 

"If you look on the path of the tornado, it's got the leaves off of the corn," Soltwedel said. "And we have a bean field on the other side of the highway, and it's stripped of leaves — all of them. It's just the spear sticking out of the ground. It was very damaged, and it's too late to replant."

He said cleanup is expected to take another three weeks, and some larger debris piles will have to remain until fall. Soltwedel added that he and others in the area are still deciding whether to rebuild.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is providing several forms of disaster assistance to impacted producers. William Graff, the Illinois state executive director of the USDA Farm Service Agency, said navigating the damage can be difficult. 

"When disaster strikes like this, a lot of times it's random. Everything's not always covered completely by insurance," Graff said. "We're one of the agencies that work out here in the agricultural, rural community to help them out."

Graff said available programs include an emergency conservation program, an emergency forest restoration program, emergency assistance for livestock and honeybees, a livestock indemnity program, a farm storage facility loan program offering low-interest loans for rebuilding grain bins or other commodity storage and a tree assistance program. He said if the area is declared a disaster, producers would automatically qualify for emergency loans at a low interest rate.

With the wide variety of resources available, he encourages local farmers to go directly to their local USDA Farm Service Agency. They can help navigate assistance applications, determine eligibility and connect people with resources. 

For more details about local USDA programs, visit this link.

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