Two hundred bright kayaks litter what used to be Dave Holl’s front yard; their neat rows a striking contrast to the mangled piles of debris surrounding them.
The scar from the Dec. 26 tornado is visible through Dave’s Rowlett, Texas neighborhood. He lives about 200 yards from Lake Ray Hubbard where he and his family operate a kayak instruction business from their home.
“I heard the sirens and came to look outside. There was a lightning strike, and that’s when I saw the outline of the funnel coming toward me,” Dave recalls. “The tornado hit so fast. I managed to grab on to doorknobs on either side of the hall and hang on. It blew two bedrooms off the back.” It also blew away nearly all of his kayaks.
“They took off everywhere,” Dave says.
No one in the home was hurt. But the EF-3 tornado flung their life and business into chaos. Team Depot volunteers from across North Texas were eager to help Dave piece through the rubble. More than 150 Team Depot volunteers spent a full day canvassing two Rowlett neighborhoods to clear debris. Some woke up at 5 a.m. to make the drive from Weatherford, Texas – 80 miles to the west.
“We have a roof over our heads when these people don’t. We’re trying to give back any way we can,” explains Shane Moore, Home Depot district manager. “This is the way recovery ought to be done,” Dave says. Dallas Tornado Disaster Relief One item Dave won’t let volunteers clear away is a green sleeping bag clinging to a tree branch.
It’s the sleeping bag he was using just minutes before the tornado barreled into his
home. He points to it as it flaps in the wind like a flag – now a reminder of just how close he came to death.
“Everything happened so fast,” he says. In the days following the tornado, Dave’s kayaks began to reappear as neighbors found them scattered among their own wreckage. The rainbow rows in his yard are growing by the day. “We had kayaks brought back that were located two miles away from here,” he says. “We’ve got 95 percent of the boats back which is phenomenal.”
