Jana B. Bacon, a Wilbraham resident and partner at accounting and risk management firm Wolf & Co., was in the company’s Boston office when the tornado struck.

The next morning, she received word that her mother-in-law in Monson had suffered a heart attack and died, and her brother-in-law’s home had been destroyed.

“It was horrific,” she told Banker & Tradesman. “The street where my in-laws live was just destroyed. The next door house was lifted up and put back down. On the next street, I think 11 houses were lost.”

Wolf has 28 employees in its Springfield office. Many of them were affected either directly or indirectly by the tornado.

The firm has a philanthropy committee, but the tornado wasn’t an event that required committee meetings or long-range action plans. Wolf employees immediately helped each other and their neighbors.

‘Not Quite Done’

“Anybody who had a chainsaw and knew how to use it” was in high demand, Bacon said. They cleared fallen trees and sorted debris into piles of wood, metal and trash. The few personal items they found were returned to their rightful owners.

That kind of effort was common in the stricken region, Bacon said.

“There were people going up and down the streets handing out water and sandwiches, and that went on for months,” she said.

Since those first few harrowing days, recovery efforts have been mixed, Bacon said. Her family has rebuilt, and did so in short order thanks to close ties with contractors and very responsive insurance companies.

But Bacon’s brother-in-law’s neighbors are still suffering – even after Bacon’s family moved into their own rebuilt home by last Christmas.

“[The neighbors’] house is being built now. It’s not quite done, and you still see places where no work’s been done, and you hear stories about problems with insurance companies.”

“It’ll take years,” she said of full recovery.