Sylvie Cooney spent the one or two minutes it took the tornado to plow through her Wilbraham neighborhood huddled in her basement with her three daughters. Her home was severely damaged and took six months to repair. Her neighbors’ homes were destroyed. One of those neighbors only recently moved into his newly constructed home.

But in the year since the funnel cloud stumbled heavily through that swath of Western Massachusetts, one thing – or group of things – that was swept away pains Cooney more than anything else.

“It’s the loss of the trees,” she told Banker & Tradesman. “We were in an established neighborhood with mature trees. We have three kids, and I didn’t realize how much their play involved the trees. It’s affected us so much. We’ve planted one or two, but there’s no shade. It’s like living in a hot, open field. The woods across the street are all dead and mangled. We hate looking out our front window.”

Difficult Conversations

The kind of anguish caused by the disappearance or destruction of so many trees is plain and obvious. What was perhaps a bit more surprising to Cooney, given just how obvious it was that her home had been damaged, was the tedium and difficulty of getting her home – and the lives she and her family shared there – back to normal.

“It’s so much paperwork, and it’s so involved,” Cooney told Banker & Tradesman. “It’s just not an easy thing to go through. The government programs make you jump through hoops. We got a home equity loan, but the house was damaged, so you can’t get all you need. It’s time consuming.”

Brady Chianciola, a regional vice president at Holyoke-based PeoplesBank, said Cooney’s situation wasn’t uncommon after the storm.

When it comes to making costly home improvements, a home equity loan is a tried-and-true method for financing projects. But when a home is actually damaged to the point of losing value, qualifying for a loan large enough to make the necessary repairs can be a challenge.

Chianciola said PeoplesBank has worked with homeowners to come to loan arrangements that make sense both for folks who need to make repairs and for the bank’s appetite for risk.

“Those are difficult conversations, but we try to work with (borrowers). We really work with them,” Chianciola said.

Lost Youth

Cooney and her daughters were about to leave for dance lessons as the tornado swirled into their neighborhood. She huddled with the girls, ages 6, 9 and 12, in the basement of the home. Her husband, Jonathan, manager of building services at Mercy Medical Center in Springfield, was working.

“You could feel the pressure of the house change,” Cooney remembered. “You could hear that freight train sound.”

When it was over, the Cooney women couldn’t see out the front windows of the house because of the fallen trees blocking the view. A tree service that happened to be working nearby immediately began cutting trees out of the roadway. One had been “sucked out of the ground, lifted up and dropped in the street,” Cooney said.

The walls of the Cooney home had shifted and it suffered some water damage and roof damage. The utilities were ripped off the house and the garage was damaged. A shed, the family’s lawnmower, the children’s swing set and a family heirloom bench were all destroyed.

“But we were able to live in (the house),” Cooney said.

Today, the “shock and disbelief” has faded, but a lingering sadness remains.

“My kids,” Cooney said, “will never be able to put a swing in a tree while they’re young.”