CLARK, PA. Whirlwind of activity makes quick work of tornado cleanup

Hundreds of volunteers spent a good part of their weekend working in the borough.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
CLARK, Pa. -- Three days of concentrated volunteer assistance from a wide variety of sources has nearly wrapped up the cleanup of tornado debris in the borough.
"We've just about completed it," Mayor Douglas Bradley said Monday afternoon.
The twister that dropped out of the sky around 7:30 p.m. Nov. 10 destroyed a dozen homes, seriously damaged a dozen others and caused light to moderate damage to 96 others, most of them in Clark and neighboring South Pymatuning Township.
The tornado killed Charles E. Templeton, 81, of 22 Milton St., and injured 18 others, authorities said.
Operation Clark Clean-Up
The borough had been relying on help from neighboring municipalities to do the heavy cleanup work every day last week, and about 300 individual volunteers showed up Saturday for Operation Clark Clean-Up, working on removing the smaller pieces of debris that littered the eastern half of this borough of 630 people.
About 50 showed up Sunday, and there were about 125 volunteers working in town Monday, Bradley said.
Monday's volunteers included crews from the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, which sent a group of inmates from the State Regional Correctional Facility at Mercer.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has nearly completed its controlled burn of a sizable mountain of wood and wood products hauled from the devastated area to a burn pit at the municipal building on Winner Road. Bradley said that job should be completed today.
Seeking grants
The federal government didn't declare Clark and South Pymatuning Township to be disaster areas, but the two municipalities are hoping the state will come through with some grants to help with cleanup costs.
Both filed grant applications Friday with the state Department of Community and Economic Development, with Clark asking for $100,000 and South Pymatuning seeking $40,000.
Word on those applications is expected in December.