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Tornado Aftermath: Six months later Moscow residents still rebuilding

It's been six months since the Village of Moscow was ravaged by a tornado. For some it has taken this long to move back in.

Councilman and resident Kent Jones now has his next door neighbors back. The March tornado destroyed their home and just this week they moved back in. What he doesn't have is trees in the lot between their homes. However a thoughtful planting effort is underway in the village.

"Planting new trees takes a lot of planning because you don't want to line the street with all the same type of trees because if one gets a disease it's going to propagate onto all the other trees so there has to be a thoughtful process. There are meetings almost every week on the Replant Moscow Committee.

On the committee is a Cincinnati Zoo horticulturist and a University of Cincinnati professor who are mapping the old and new trees with GPS. Without trees Jones can hear sounds he doesn't want to hear like trains on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River.

Thompson: "It looks so much different then when I was here six months ago.

Jones: "And what really saved us is the volunteers from groups and from municipalities who came from as far away as Fairfield and Tipp City."

After the daily media attention disappeared Jones says life went on.

"People were waiting for their insurance adjusters and then you have contractors and rebuilding. The people who couldn't rebuild were looking for other places. Right now there's a happiness because people are finally moving back into town."

Minus the eight or nine families who Jones say couldn't come back. 

You can see more pictures of Moscow here

 

 

 

Ann Thompson has decades of journalism experience in the Greater Cincinnati market and brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to her reporting.